Wise Child
by Archea
Summary: Sherlock and Lestrade find out that Lestrade is Sherlock's biological father. Cue two men in shock...and an unexpected journey into famiy love. Sherlock/John pre-slash. Planned before/not compliant with S2.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N**: This is the revised version of the first part - there aren't many changes, but it needed a spot of betaing. I'm currently working on the second part. Many thanks to those who commented and favved so far._

_Planned before/not compliant with S2._

**Wise Child**

_It is a wise child that knows its own father. _

English proverb

All in all (to quote Dr Watson's profound observation in a blog entry that never saw the light of day) it really came down to poetic justice. Sherlock was a little too fond of telling Detective Inspector Lestrade that the latter wouldn't spot his own two feet in size-twelve Dr Martens and red mountaineering socks. The Fates must have tired of the joke, or they wouldn't have tipped Sherlock into a midnight bath that left him flapping and fretting at his nemesis' escape while Lestrade tried his best to keep his consultant inside a blanket.

He was threatening to radio for backup and hot Ribena when the blanket slipped one more time over Sherlock's deceptively bird-boned frame. The flashing light on the nearest police car caught a dark smudge on his left shoulder blade, and Lestrade blinked.

Then whipped off the blanket altogether, leant forward for a closer look, and said, "Bugger".

Sherlock stiffened at the word. "If that," he replied sternly, "is your monthly contribution to deduction, I'm not impressed. Even John beat you to it on our first meal, and –"

"No, you fool! The mark! The biggish, blueish whatchamacalit – have you always had it?"

"Oh, that." Sherlock, ever the Contrary Mary, had grabbed the blanket and was pulling it back while Lestrade held stubbornly to the other end. A brief tug-of-war ensued as Sherlock carried on. "That, Inspector, is commonly known as a birthmark. Don't tell me you've never come across one in your trade? Mycroft used to call it the Blue Carbuncle, but then Mycroft's wit would hardly fill one of his tooth cavities. Makes it such a bother to investigate Turkish baths undercover. And gyms. And the Neo-pagan hikers. Lestrade, what are you doing? I couldn't be less interested in your ankle, man, and now is not the time for a crime scene reconstruct –"

But Sherlock had to freeze mid-diphthong. Lestrade's left foot, now he'd pulled off his shoe and sock, sported the exact same mark – biggish, blueish, dimly spiderish – on the instep. The two men looked up at each other slowly. Lestrade's expression was that of a fawn staring at a refrigeration van's headlights. Sherlock's expression was that of the fawn having successfully pegged the van as the same vehicle that had run over his mother a month earlier.

"Impossible." Sherlock swallowed. "That is, at the very least, very improbable."

"I'll say! For one thing, I have deep brown eyes –"

Sherlock shook his head sadly. "Check your Mendelian tables, Gregor. And look better. There's always something... Ha! Nailed it. You were twenty-two when I was conceived, and unless I'm mistaken, which I'm not, my parents were still posted abroad."

"Thank god." Lestrade clutched at the tendril of hope with wild-eyed optimism. "Where abroad? You name it. Beijing? Paris? Afghanistan?" Where had young Greg been twenty-five years ago, a penny freshly minted by the Met? The past had been a closed case to him ever since the wretched divorce. Ah yes, that exchange programme with – oh god. The Ecole de Gendarmerie at Geneva. Where his libido had been anything but neutral in its heyday. He knew Sherlock had seen him flinch, seen his face blanch as the memory struck home, leaving him no choice but to speak out. In for a penny...

"Switzerland," Lestrade said dully, wondering if this was the moment to remind Sherlock that, as chromosomes went, he'd got the best of a bad lot. Hell, it could have been worse. Could have been Gregson, if he hadn't been grounded at Hendon for shagging the Collision Investigation instructor. "Now look on the bright side, kid –"

Sherlock _whimpered_.

"Really, brother. I'm surprised." An umbrella tip speared the ground between them, missing Lestrade's naked foot by an inch or two. He hopped back, looking for his sock. "Notwithstanding your little monograph on footsteps, this one eluded you longer than I thought." Mycroft Holmes turned to Lestrade. "My mother's word was good enough for me, Detective Inspector. But I dare say you'll want a test. It seems that diplomatic life in Geneva proved a lit-tle boring at times – no doubt you provided a healthier distraction than milk chocolate."

"I –" Lestrade looked up to see his entire force task convening around them. He could spot Donovan close behind Mycroft, staring at him as if he was the Antichrist. Wonderful. And Anderson was blabbing into his phone, probably denouncing him for five years' stealthy nepotism. Lestrade licked his lips. In for a penny, in for a pounding? "Just what d'you think you're playing at? Why didn't you tell me before you more or less blackmailed me into hiring him?"

"Come, come, Inspector. All I said was, 'That boy needs a firm hand and a smoke detector.' You proved equally reliable in both roles – the blood instinct, I'll wager."

"What did he tell you?" Lestrade asked Sherlock. He picked up the blanket which had once more flopped to the ground, covering the younger man's shoulders mechanically.

Sherlock's voice sounded as if it was filtered through a nutmeg grinder. "That you were quite the average bobby, not worth my time or attention. And that he'd be happy to employ me in a minor capacity if I were to put my intellect to good use."

"Like father, like son. So predictable," Mycroft purred, and Lestrade shoved his balled fists deeper into his coat pockets, taking deep breaths to calm himself. You never knew, governmenticide was still punishable by the axe. Or was it chemical castration in these enlightened days? He'd have to ask the Westminster Division.

"Inspector, if you'd be so kind as to donate a hair... Or a toenail, since they're available. My staff is waiting."

Lestrade lifted his left foot. John Watson, who had somehow made it to the happy crowd, stepped forward.

"Sherlock –"

"I'm in shock," Sherlock said, falling back a pace.

"It's all right. No, it's not. Is it? Oh, Christ. I'd better see you tomorrow, then... er..."

"Lestrade." Sherlock's effort to sound desultory was commendable, but his white face and shaky voice retained a trace of the van-deducing fawn. "That thing that you did – that was – good. Really. Your bouncing hormones made it possible for the Vernet genes to breed in, in, in, in – in a sanitary site, sparing them a stuffier environment." His pointed look grazed Mycroft's figure. "And that's the long and short of it as far as I'm concerned. I don't see any necessity to change what has proved an adequate working relationship. Good night."

He spun on his heel and dived into the crowd, still bare chested. Lestrade felt a hand on his shoulder.

"I'll see to the car, sir." Donovan was looking at him, her countenance now hovering between fleeting compassion and abject hilarity. "I'll make sure the F – that is, your – I'll make sure they get home."

... Lestrade's last thought that night was for the lush lanes of the English Consulate at Geneva and their convenient hedges. And the lush white body rippling under his, wave after wave of blood-tingling lust and Chanel N°. 5, and the voice – his – panting "Oh baby, it's Christmas!" He groaned, pressing his face into the sheets. Charlotte, she had said her name was, and that she was on the pill.

Sherlock was right. His son was right. He was an idiot.

* * *

><p>Sherlock, needless to say, did not show up at the Yard the next day. Lestrade did, only to find that he'd been granted a two week paid paternity leave he'd never thought of requesting in the first place. He spent the first hour at his desk, penning a memo to his team and wondering how he could have thought paperwork wearisome before.<p>

Eleven versions were tried and found wanting. The two finalists read as follows :

_"To everyone concerned. I guess all of you know by now that Sherlock Holmes, our consulting detective, was found to be my biological son. It's a complex situation, with work-related issues, and naturally you'll want to know what my position is. Here goes. I'll stand by the CO's decision or Sherlock's if they chose to end his consultancy, but my own vote is to give our team dynamics a chance to carry on exactly as they are. Sherlock's skills make him an asset to our work, but you have my word that here and on any professional premises he'll be treated like before and doesn't expect anything else. I've had your vote of confidence till now. I'm asking you to stretch it an extra inch, and trusting no one will rue it."_

_"To everyone concerned. Yeah, he's my Kinder egg surprise. Take five and laugh your abs off, you tossers, but you'd better have them in tip-top shape when the CO pops in for his monthly tour. And before anyone asks, yeah, still one of the gang, like before – no more, no less. All clear? Good. See you on Monday, then, and on your head be it if any of you calls me Daddy in The Presence."_

He tore up the first version, typed the other into his mail box, and got up. He didn't need a week to know what was to be done, but he certainly needed a corpse-stiff Scotch before he did do it and there was no place like home.

* * *

><p>"At least have a bite of toast or something." John banged the teapot on the kitchen table to drive his point home. "It's been four days, Sherlock! I don't think anyone, not even you, ever solved a case of identity with a hunger strike."<p>

"What case?" Sherlock, stretched out slantwise on his chair, his slippered feet shoved under the table, was breaking the toast absently over a plate. Apparently, his next masterplan to catch Moriarty implied throttling the man with bread crumbs. That, or he was working on a new fractal theory. "There's no case when there's no doubt. The tests have made it clear that Lestrade and I are genetically connected. Fine. Since he and I and you for that matter are equally connected to everyone else on this planet through six people, I don't see why you're so obsessed with this. You've never inquired about my relatives before when you saw me skip a meal."

John sighed. "Look, it can't be that simple." The table was now spattered with runaway experimental crumbs and he went to fetch a sponge. "Nor for him. You've just found out he's your father –"

"Genitor."

"– and while the two of you have been friends –"

"Colleagues."

" – for years, it's a mind-boggling fact, and you can't pretend it doesn't affect you."

"I'm not affected! Affect is a strictly empirical percept! I don't do empirical!" Sherlock was getting more agitated by the minute, and John pushed his advantage along with the sponge.

"Well, I bet it's affecting Lestrade. Has he called you?"

"No." Sherlock tucked in his chin as he drew a complex spiral on the oilcloth with his fingertip. "Not that I'm expecting him to unless he has a case. Which brings us full circle to –"

The knock on their main door was loud enough to be heard through the flat. As was Lestrade's voice, pat on the rap. "Sherlock? Let me in. I know you're here, I have your coat's testimony. We need to talk – at least I need to talk and you need to interrupt. Open that door, please."

"I'm not changing my name!" Sherlock yelled out from his chair. "It's been highly functional for twenty-five years, and I see no reason – "

John rose with a sigh, leaving the room.

"I'm not asking you to take my bloody name!" Lestrade was yelling back thirty seconds later, stomping into the kitchen. He had two bulging volumes under his arm. "You can call yourself Sinclair Bassington-ffrench for all I care, you great clodpole." He dropped his burden next to the teapot, grabbed a chair, and crossed his arms ominously. "What I care about is this, and no, let me have my say. You've never spoken much of your folks, Sherlock, and what I know of your Mum would peter out before the third line if I tried to report it. But you – you I've known for five years now, and even if I still haven't figured you out and don't hold any hope I ever will, I've cared for you way more than I had any call to. Now that I know – well. If you're my son, then you're my son, and no one, not you, not anyone, will make me deny it. I'm not gonna force you into some sort of setup, whatever your brother has in mind, I get it that this has come upon you like a sore boil – "

"It's –" Sherlock had winced at his choice of words. "It's not something I'm going to delete. It's just – Lestrade, I've no idea what you expect me to do or say." His voice had gone oddly thin on the last words and John, from his station at the kitchen window, felt a soft pinch in the region of his heart.

"It's all right," Lestrade repeated, his voice gentler. He reached out and brushed the curve of Sherlock's shoulder, careful not to squeeze it. "It is, really. We'll just – make it up as we go, okay? I know I want to." He glanced at Sherlock's averted face, and John could almost hear the click as more pieces fell into place in their two minds. "I guess he – your other father – was not a very demonstrative man?"

Sherlock nodded, eyes on the crumbs. The unspoken words remained unspoken.

"It's all right," Lestrade said again, and stood up. "Look, I can't stay, I'm already late for work. I've really come to bring you these." He motioned to the two enormous scrapbooks on the table. "It's the best I could do. Photographs, papers... you know. Thought you might like to know where you come from. So to speak."

He was straightening his back as he spoke, and John felt a twinge of déjà vu at the defensive pose. "I'm not gonna tell you my people were the pick of England, Sherlock. But they're nothing to be ashamed of. Your grandfather won thirty-four crosswords puzzle competitions in the _Times_, used to send them under a different name every month. And my Ma was as sharp-eyed as they make 'em. One glance at your shoes, back from school, and she could tell soil from silt and marl from clay, there was no hiding from her if you'd gone and played truant. Hm, yeah, well, there was a hiding, but a light-handed one, really. And then a hug and a hot muffin, and everything forgotten until next time."

The West Country burr was gathering in his voice, and Sherlock lifted his head, intrigued. Lestrade's smile had taken ten years off his face.

"Anyway. Keep them as long as you like. And – well, you know where to find me." Lestrade had made for the door. He was halfway into their living room when he snapped his fingers, stepped back, looped an arm round Sherlock's still frame, and pulled him to his chest in a solid hug.

Sherlock went rigid with horror. At the window, John Watson turned quickly aside and yielded to a fit of impromptu asthma.

"Yeah, forgot to tell you. The Vernets don't have a monopoly on Continental genes, son. You're the happy owner of a pint or two of Gallic blood – Southern Gallic blood. Bye, John."

John waited till the flat door had shut with a boom to turn back. His flatmate was unhitching himself from his chair with a poker face which, in John's experience of gambling which extended over many nations and three continents, wouldn't have fooled a charity bingo novice.

"Er, d'you want to take these to your room?" he asked, pointing to the albums. He did not expect an answer and got none. Knowing from experience that a kitchen table had little to no chance of remaining a tabula rasa in Sherlock's proximity, he carried the scrapbooks to their living room and cleared a niche for them on one of the lower shelves.

Then busied himself a little more with them before going up to his room. Sherlock was not the only one who liked to run experiments after all, and John had learnt a thing or two, living with a man who constantly paid of his own person for science.

* * *

><p>The rest of the week dribbled on.<p>

A comment appeared on Sherlock's Web site which might or might not have come from Moriarty, though _Reaching back to you very very soon, dahling!_ hardly smacked of the Master at his best. Sherlock turned to the Internet and checked dahlias, dalits and little dahus, not putting any real effort into the chase. Most of the time he huddled on his long-suffering sofa and watched the sun rise and the sun set, and the British rain fall on the nothing new.

John was no help at all. John's answer to Sherlock's mention of the nothing new was, "Please tell me you're joking," and "Have you called him yet? " Calling Lestrade, according to John, seemed to entail making animated chit-chat about being Lestrade's son. Which was problematic.

Once the first shock of had worn off, Sherlock had found that he liked his new status. It made sense, in a way that pleased his mind more than he'd thought possible. Lestrade had always been there for him in his solid, stubborn warmth, and Sherlock knew it; knew that without the DI's rough blessing, even if it came with drugs busts and spastic index fingers and inept questions, he would still be an embryo in the great womb of detection. Without Lestrade, he would have remained "Holmes, S." on a students' registration list instead of becoming SHERLOCK HOLMES on two celebrated Web sites. Names were immaterial. Facts mattered. Sherlock looked at this particular fact, and Sherlock saw that it was good.

But, dear Lord, what else was there to say? He'd Googled "sonhood", letting himself be momentarily sidetracked by the Scrabble forums, then restricted his search to "unexpected paternal recognition". And he still didn't see his way to sustaining even a five-minute exchange on the topic, unless Lestrade showed interest in the late President Mitterrand or, perish the thought, _Star Wars_. So he'd dipped into Lestrade's albums, taking the blond eyelash planted between the eleventh and twelfth page and putting it fondly in his shirt pocket. It would have been easy to set it back in place, but if it pleased John to find out that he'd consulted the books, Sherlock was willing to overlook a stratagem inspired by John's calamitous detective novels.

Besides, there might be another family mystery to plumb. He'd looked up statistics on the comparative rate of illegitimate births in rural and urban environments and the results were quite encouraging.

On Friday night, while John was cooking what he would inevitably call the Trooper's Risotto, i.e. beans and ham, and Sherlock was completing a new tour of the albums, Lestrade called. Sherlock pounced on his phone.

"Sherlock." The DI's voice sounded cautious but resolute. "Thought you might like to help with a case. Circus owner found dead, mauled by a lion, him and his missus too. Some foul play by the look of it, but no one saw anything, the lion's cage was locked from the inside and the lion himself can't be found. Also, there might be a Doomsday sect involved. Do you want...?"

"Yes," Sherlock breathed happily.

"Good. Take a cab to Hampstead and ask for Rounder's Show. And, Sherlock, I'd rather you brought John. And – "

"Yes?" Sherlock asked, mouthing "lion" and "cab" to John almost simultaneously.

Lestrade seemed to hesitate, then said, "Look, just remember – no, never mind. See you there."

Sherlock waited, but all he heard was a tinny ringing tone. As he hurried out onto the landing, coat and John in tow, he nearly collided with Mrs Hudson carrying a covered plate.

"Oops! Careful, dear. Going a-roving, are we? Your detective inspector must have called. Say hello from me, will you, he's such a lovely man. God knows that if I was ten years younger – "

She was cut short by a firm peck on the cheek. Sherlock was looking at her with the beaming countenance that she alone seemed to call up in him.

"It's all right, Mrs Hudson. You'd still be past procreating age, but I've always considered you more or less in loco parentis."

And left her gaping after him as he skipped down the stairs, John's exasperated sigh unheeded at his back.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Rounder's Show, as they soon found out, was bivouacking on a north-eastern plateau of Hampstead Heath with a bird's-eye view of Highgate Cemetery and its unholy trinity of ghosts, the Tall Man in the Hat, the Solitary Cyclist and Black Peter, the Pogojowski vampyr who fed on live foxes, beheaded women and rival journalists.

(Thus spake Wikipedia to Sherlock during their ride uphill. Sherlock paled and made a mental note to wikiblock John's laptop in the near future. Deprived of access to potential sensationalist titles, John would later come out with a modest _The Lion, the Bitch (Except She Wasn't) and the Yard Row_. Since John's laptop now refused to renege on the Wiki ban, it took Sherlock four days, six hours and a last-minute appeal to Mrs Hudson to crack the pun.)

As he stepped out of the cab into the rain-refreshed air, Sherlock contracted his retinas like a cat on a night out. The rain still dimmed the shapes before him, but he could make out the bulk of the circus vans, some outlined by strings of fairy lights which stood their fragile ground against the cruder police lights pulsing white and blue under the layers of darkness. And here was another shape, svelter, familiar; her hair bundled into the hood of her Gore-Tex coat, motioning them forward.

He drew nearer and waited for the predictable quip about freak shows.

"Hullo, John. Hul-looo, Sonny. Take Your Kid to Work night, is it?" Donovan grinned up at him as she unclipped the radio from her belt coat, her voice suddenly pitched to a bright coo. Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "Your dad'll be in the lion's van, fourth on your left, just follow your nose. And remember Mr Good Manners: We say Hello, We say Please, Before we Play with the Corpsies." She turned to John and, with a flourish, lifted the police tape a bare inch over his head. Sherlock's attempt to confiscate the tape and tug it up met with unexpected resistance (_3rd dan in kendo, no, 4th, possibly handstretches her own pasta_), forcing him to slouch his shoulders and meet her front to front.

"He thinks you're smarter than the lot of us." Her voice had dropped back to its crisp-edged self. "No newsflash, that. But if you are, you know that tonight is not just about you. Tonight is all about him and you, and you and us. So you mind your dad tonight, bright boy. You mind him, and we'll... mind you. You don't, I'll march you to the naughty step myself." Her smile had a hint of teeth now.

_Definitely 5th dan_. But she hadn't raised her voice, not enough to distract the two constables flipping a lazy torch over their notes on the other side of her car, and now she was pivoting to her side to let him pass. So not a taunt, or only half a taunt, and he wasn't quite sure about the missing half. He craned his neck and strained his eyes to scan her face again, only to find that her radio now obscured most of it.

A hand curled around his elbow, pulling him back to the focussed presence that was John in the night, John in the flesh, his John, pushing them onward amongst the small archipel of cars.

"She's giving you a pass, actually," his John was saying in an amused voice.

"A pass?" Dear Lord. Where Donovan was concerned, a little semantics could go a Tipperary way. A pass, a naughty step... was she trying to flirt with him?

"Yup. You're no longer the odd man out in their eyes. You're Lestrade's son, and Lestrade – well, you heard her. Lestrade is their old man too, so to speak. Pack leader. Basically, she's saying you can be honorary alpha long as you remember who's the alpha-alpha here."

"That's not how the wolf family dynamics –"

"Shhh. You know exactly what I mean. Let's go find him."

* * *

><p>Finding the crime scene was easy enough, though it entailed playing hide-and-seek with the various contraptions of tarps and ropes which the Met had hastily set up to keep the rain from ruining the new show. But there was a change in the air – it grew more fetid, lomier as they neared the lion's van – and an odd rush of happiness invading Sherlock. Odd, because this wasn't just the routine heat of the game; this felt more diffuse, a softer static glow. More like coming home after a case to the rich cinnamon notes of Mrs Hudson's late night tea and John's compact shadow at the fireplace. Which hardly made sense, since they were still outdoors and he hadn't even been properly introduced to the case. But there it was, this fullness, this homecoming, in the scene that uncoiled at last before him: the lion tamer's van, or rather the lion's van with the lion out and the tamer in, messily visible through the barred partitions.<p>

Except it wasn't the dead man Sherlock was seeing. It was the grey-haired man scratching the right side of his neck as he looked down at the corpse, chin tucked in, in a posture so familiar, so well-worn over the years (and corpses) that Sherlock couldn't have said what made it so warmly particular now. But warm it was, and particular, and since there was only one way to make the sensation clearer, Sherlock found his steps quickening to –

"And where do you think you're going?"

The sensation faltered, jarred; cut short by a visual he thought he'd deleted years ago, when his last visit to a circus had coincided with his sixth birthday. The circus had been Mother's idea and she had laughed out his frown, dancing them all to the big marquee where he had sat between Father and Mycroft, hating the coloured-by-numbers stage, the flatulent brass-band music, the red-nosed clown who had waddled up to the first row and asked his name. Sherlock had had to say it (twice, because of the din), only to have the clown look his way and call out "Homer!" for the rest of the show. He remembered the rising tides of laughter, and how grateful he had been to Father, who had sat next to him through the whole ordeal and never laughed once.

"Holmes."

"Anderson." Sherlock tried to sidestep the man, only to find himself glaring at a large, slightly congested nose. _Plus ça change_...

"You're not getting in here with that, that, that electrostatic menace on your back." The cold had done nothing to improve Anderson's pissy tones – he now sounded like an aggrieved Daffy Duck. "As if we didn't have enough trouble picking up clues. In case you'd forgotten, you're dealing with a lion here."

In the lit-up background, Lestrade had straightened up with an inaudible groan and a twitch of his shoulders towards the rear door. Anderson had seen it too; had been on the watch for it, crinkling his eyes in the briefest of asides. Sherlock felt something catch in his throat and well into a pulse, low-tuned and dangerous.

"Overrating yourself, as always. Let. Me. In."

"Or what? You're no VIP. Lestrade made it clear. Made it an official note to us, in fact, so don't you go and think –"

Hatred struck, then, blind and knowing. Hatred because the fool had dulled his glow, brought the past again, because of Lestrade's back turned and retreating into a shadowed corner, because of a child's mistaken gratitude, because of Anderson getting in the way every. Single. Time. Sherlock forced in a thin breath, covered it with a smirk.

"Tell me, Anderson. What was it that made your father so disappointed in you?"

"Sherlock." John, matching tone to gesture as he gave Sherlock's elbow a cautionary pinch.

Oh, but it was worth it, seeing Anderson green and still. Sherlock shook his arm free and carried on, mind rising to the occasion, tearing through six years of mental records, fast and savage. "He wanted you to be a full-fledged doctor like himself. But you never managed that, did you? Never even made it to the right faculty? "

"Guys. Fucking stop it with the sibling rival –"

"Three grade As, all at 'A' level. That's all you'd have needed to get into medicine. Judging from your records here, you barely managed two. What did you do, barter your initials? Or wait, what am I saying. This gets much better." He knew his laughter sounded manic but, God. He'd never felt so high on his own.

"Sherlock."

"Not Uni, no, not even that. Before that. He wanted you to enter a private school, of course, had scrimped and saved to pay the fee, and you...you failed the entrance test. Couldn't even give him that, could you? You –"

"_Sherlock!_"

He was so focused on the rip-up, finding and timing his blows to the white-faced man before him, that a whole pride of lions could have been prancing up and along unnoticed. He hadn't noticed Lestrade either, a few steps back on their left, his face set and unsmiling as he took in the scene.

"Right. You and I need a word together – and that goes for you too, Anderson. John, you seem to be the man of reason tonight, have a dekko at it all? Sherlock, you're coming with me. Now."

He would have protested, but Lestrade, having said his say, was cutting a brisk stride towards a smaller van on their left. Sherlock followed, making it a point to bypass Anderson and scan the corpse on his way. In his present state, the late Rounder could hardly be called an invigorating sight, but Sherlock felt almost thankful to the man for providing his first stable, clear-cut impression of the evening. He whisked out his phone and took a few pictures of the man's back with its intriguing cat's-cradle of red lines before heading to the van.

"Well?" Lestrade said once Sherlock had climbed the metal folding-steps and closed the door. The DI was facing him before a partition that looked at first like a giant needle-case but was really a knife thrower's live-in arsenal, pinned with blades of all sizes and species. Mrs Rounder's lodge, then – Sherlock had Googled the circus programme in the cab.

"Care to explain that little number of yours out there? Or do I get three guesses like in the old tales?"

Sherlock weighed his options. Most of the time, explaining was all it took to soothe an irate Lestrade, but this was before the DI had become part of the problem, which might well trip the smooth running of explanation. How did other people, ordinary people, tell their ordinary fathers that they had every right to be Very Important People in their eyes? The answer, as often when Sherlock was truly at a loss, came in his brother's unctuous sneer. _Try ordinary words, if it's not above your strength?_

"Anderson said –." Huh, good enough as ordinary went. "Anderson said you told them –"

And this was when all the words stopped at once, but Lestrade's hands had already relayed them, weighing on his shoulders as they turned him slowly, steadily away from the knives. Sherlock gave in to the touch, waiting as he was held first at arms' length, then closer, one of Lestrade's hands moving up to cup his face. Making it impossible to escape the dark-brown eyes filling with attention, Lestrade seeing him at close quarters, Lestrade _observing_ him before he spoke.

"And you don't know any better than to pay Anderson mind? And take hearsay evidence? You know better than that, lad." A thumb brushing the ridge of his cheek, to a snort of disbelief. "Next time, try asking me first? I told them what I told every higher-up and their sweet old Mas – that I wanted my son around. With me. One of us. But team is as team does, Sherlock, and what you just did was way out of order."

Sherlock tried a warning look of his own, aware that the hand-hug rather spoilt the effect. Rules were a) boring, b) changeable, if Mycroft's example was anything to go by, and c) wasted where Anderson was concerned. The DI's lips twitched slightly, but his eyes remained grave.

"Not letting you off, Sherlock. Not this time. There's a thin line between wit and viciousness and you won't cross it again, not here nor anywhere else I can hear you."

"Or what?" Oh, brilliant. Now he was parroting Anderson. Sherlock pouted hard and tried again. "You'll do what, throw me in a cell and ground me?"

"'Course not. That would be pretty unfair to the case." This time, Lestrade's smile was noticeably mischievous. "Nah, we Lestrades have more expedient methods. Remember? Hiding, hug, hot muffin. You'd have to wait a bit for the muffin if we're outdoors, but there'll always be" – the DI gave his mac pocket a cheerful pat - , "a mint imperial to tide you over, son."

And with that, Lestrade tilted his head aside and winked at him.

In nights yet to come, alone and shaking in a high-altitude refuge, Sherlock would think back on this moment in sharp wonder. For the wink was an old friend of his, older than Mrs Hudson or the skull, or Victor (who ranged a close second and could have testified to their early association). The wink-and-tilt were Sherlock's, practiced since his first term at Cambridge, when he'd found that people did his bidding quicker if he made his face endearing, a smile here and a wink there. The wink had come more naturally, so he'd used it again and again, up to the very day he'd met John at Barts and whipped it out, heart beating faster than heart had any business to beat. And now it was winking back at him on another face, older, rounder. Gentler. His father's face – picking it from Sherlock in the course of all these years, mimicking him unawares? Or was it actually the other way round? A gift, handed down preciously, thoughtlessly (typical Lestrade), across a much wider chasm of years? The voice of blood, traitorous and dazzling?

It was such a thrill, this idea that Lestrade and he now made up a whole new field to be probed and plumbed and experimented on, the precious bond of genetics, that he nearly missed the latter's concerned "Sherlock?"

"Bond," Sherlock gasped back.

Lestrade blinked. "Huh? Yeah, John told me you'd never watched those. Well, why not. If you like. I ought to be seeing more of you, really. Would like it, too." He ran a tired hand over his nose and brow, then smiled again. "Say, I'll make you a deal. John tells you what's good, yeah? Then let's say I tell you what's right, and you –"

"And I?"

"You still get to tell us what's what at the end of day. Trust me, sunshine, you get the lion's share."

And Lestrade's face fell so quickly Sherlock could not hold a nervous giggle. "Oh, Christ. The sodding lion. Look, you'd better head back to the scene – I need to get in touch with Wildlife Crime. And forensics. And Hampstead Hospital, to check on Sheila Rounder. Oh, and Anderson, too. I promise."

And the hand-hug fell apart, though Sherlock felt the ghost memory of it lingering on his cheek for a second or two as he moved to face the knife-wall again. Strange, that he had not minded the real thing. It was years since a man's hand had come across his face unclenched, yet not so strange if he did his reckonings – six years ago, Lestrade already, pressing a wet flannel over a leaner Sherlock's face and hands while Sherlock babbled of ants. It was the final, itching stage of withdrawal, and Sherlock had carried it out without style or grace because the ants were all over the place, competing with the oysters and Mycroft to take over the world. The Aztecs had been the first to spot the truth and toast the ants, so the diet was really Mycroft's master plan to become less edible and Lestrade must alert the press at once. It all coalesced, really, except for the flannel which had no business setting his face on fire. Lestrade's answers had been tireless, if a little wild – the press had been informed, yeah, NATO too, the bees and the French were on their side, scratch my nose again and I'll truss you up in police tape, see if I don't.

The answers had cooled Sherlock's fears wonderfully, and he'd done his best to reciprocate later on, when Lestrade had demanded he quit for good, or left. _I promise_.

He scanned the wall. There was a gap in the gleaming rows; one of the smaller, lancet-like knives was missing. Had the Rounder woman – no. Lestrade's eyes were on him, but his arms still hung at his side, slack and quiet. Lestrade knew where the knife was. Probably in one of Anderson's sterilised bags, after the man had noticed a speck of this or that on the blade. Unless the knife had been found in the van? Yes, it had to be the van. Sherlock lowered his gaze to the small table laden with knick-knacks and a large photograph, its aluminium frame gleaming under the ceiling lights. He picked it up. The camera had caught her looking up at Rounder with a smile, oblivious to the flash, a strand of hair dangling over her left eye. What a fool the murderer had been to let it remain in its place of honour, the table centrepiece.

"I'll leave the lion to you. I think. But this, here – I can help. You'll have to look for someone else, though; she's been framed." Lestrade groaned at the pun and Sherlock grinned; then, second thought striking, crossed the aisle in quick, cat-soft steps, and flung the door open. "Her knife was found on the scene," he went on, addressing the man flailing for balance on the folding-steps, "but it didn't cause the wounds on Rounder. Clever idea, to make it look as if _she_ was framing the lion, but not so clever, really, because one knife wouldn't be enough not play the trick. Four straight lines, spaced out exactly the same? Not even giving or taking a millimetre? No. They could only be drawn by four sharp points aligned on the same axis. My money, Doctor Anderson, is on unrequited lust, clumsy revenge and a professional digging fork. We're on Hampstead Heath; you may want to talk to the district gardeners, starting with the males of the species." Sherlock grinned, unable to resist a Parthian shot. "After my father has talked to you, of course."

He climbed down the metal steps, past a bemused Anderson, and strolled back to the scene. Never stopping, even when his phone stirred to life briefly in his breast pocket. John was still on sentinel duty, deep in chat with one of Anderson's underlings – Cardinal, Sherlock noted, who hid her own cigarettes in an old tea chest and sucked on a 50p piece in the time-honored Scottish manner to fight nausea at crime scenes. There were others, too, and their names resurfaced as he walked – Jones, Banerji, Pollock (owned a white ferret), Trotter, McGraw, Giulini. Cardinal saw him first and waved. John turned his head, sandy blond under the spotlights, and Sherlock, glowing, waved back. He was coming home.

* * *

><p>"Googling up Ikea?" John asked two hours later. The lion was still missing, but so was one Leonard Steyne, head district gardener to Hampstead. Sherlock rather suspected they'd bolted off together, one carrying the other, and was channelling his efforts into finding the elusive crime weapon.<p>

"Hmm, no. Text."

"Oh. Didn't hear that one coming in."

"Hrmmm." Sherlock scuttled further back into the corner of the cab, phone held close to his eyes. John felt a merry tickle at the base of his throat which he managed to hold back. Still, he hoped that Lestrade had stuck to tradition. "Well done" would do fine, or "did me proud". Texters addressing Sherlock Holmes should have realised by now that some words in the English language came with their own caution, such as

amazing©2010Watson

or again

fantastic©2010Watson.


	3. Chapter 3

_Here we go again! Thanks to everyone who supported this._

Mrs Rounders came out of her coma, the lion was found in Golders Green Park, a shabbier Aslan lying with the ducks in Biblical goodwill and digestive stupor, and Lestrade, probably influenced by the gentle scene, decided to text Sherlock again. He'd conducted a hasty opinion poll – a _third-degree-style_ opinion poll, Gregson had complained – among the paterfamilias of the force and, dismissing the flightier options (_Twilight_ was a no-go and "pissing contest", if you asked him, would have to wait at least another twenty-five years) had settled for a meal. In a public venue. His treat. Jesus, it almost felt like a rerun of his early dating efforts, minus the pesky libido and the last-minute raid into Ma's hair mousse to stick up his fringe.

"Case closed, open invite," he typed with studied laconism. "Your call." To Sherlock, that father-son business must still feel a bit odd. Like going through one of his investigations arse backward, Lestrade thought in a fit of inspired analogy, starting with the big reveal only to dig further and further back into – yeah. Neither quite knew at that stage, did they? So don't shy him off with plans, rules, duty hours, Lestrade admonished himself, checking the patch of screen absently. Let him name the day and hour. And let you _hide_ that sodding phone, for Pete's sake; you're supposed to be the adult here.

He flattened his thumb over the screen with a glare, tugging at his desk drawer with his other hand – nice gimmick, these locked metallic affairs, if only he could remember where he'd put the tiny-tiny key. No one around did; he'd caught Gregson lockpicking his with a paperclip the other day. And now Donovan was staring at him across her own desk.

Times, measures.

"Sergeant, I'll need to borrow that helmet of yours for a —"

The loud tweets had them both start in synch. "_Angelo's, twelve. SH_." Well, well. No day like today, and it did look as if they were getting into business after all. Oh, stop grinning, you loony. Not that he'd known what to expect, this being Sherlock's call – anything from the Regency Cocoa Club to an egg sarnie in some tunnel or other, he flatsplattered against the wall while his son and heir experimented on the British driver's braking reflex. Oh, stop it right now, you loony.

"Still want my hat, sir?" Sally, biting down on her own smile. He gave up and grinned back at her, shaking his head.

"Nah, I'm going incognito. Family emergency. Cover for me till two? I'll make it up to you."

"Will do. And you just did." She waved her own mobile at him jauntily. "_Our_ big daddies are still looking for a face to go with their new slogan, you know. '_We're rough, we're tough, but we totes love a laugh_.'That's one beaming smile I've saved."

"Donovan..."

"Oooh, did I get it wrong? Bugger, it's on the tip of my tongue." She clicked it before his patient scowl. "Ah, yes. '_We're cops, we're tops, and we'll totes rip you dops_.' Still not? Hold on..."

"_Total Policing_, Sergeant. Ours not to wonder why, ours but to do and die." They both knew he disliked the ninjaspeak as much as she did.

She shrugged, opening the door to let him pass.

"Well, have fun. Give him our love. And the Clarence case if he's teething – God knows it's gritty enough."

As parting shots went, this one was barely a grazer. But it did smart a bit, Lestrade felt, pitting his small Panda against the midday traffic clumps. Because...was this why Sherlock had answered his text so readily? On the off chance of cadging a new case from his old man? Of course he'd be be pining for another riddle, and Sir George, poor sod, was a corpse after his own heart – fished out of a barrel of Mouton-Some-Muck-or-Other after he'd gone missing during a tour of Vinopolis. With Lestrade still trying to figure out why the French would name their wines after sheep. Or how to bag Dickie, George's horseracing baby brother and a very crooked penny in Lestrade's book. But all this was neither here nor there, since Lestrade, here and now, didn't want to talk shop with Sherlock. What he wanted was to talk Sherlock with Sherlock.

To get to know Sherlock, finally. Not the sum of him because that was impossible, and he wasn't even sure that was right, wanting to know someone inside out. Like Sherlock was another case to be cracked and boxed, which he wasn't, not by Lestrade or anyone else, least of all that mad Irish stalker whose notion of courtship included blowing up his own singing telegrams. No, Sherlock would probably always remain a bit inexplicable, an exception unto himself, and Lestrade was fine with that.

But still. There was so much he didn't know about that strange son of his, so many blind corners because he could only look back as far as his years with Sherlock would let him, and that wasn't much of a view. They wouldn't show him what Sherlock had been like as a kid. As a teen. What he'd liked to eat, wear, what games he'd played. Lestrade gazed at the rows of cars moving on with slow, almost mechanical reticence, and found himself thinking back on penny pushers – the old models, though they were still a novelty for young Greg and his mates, hoarding their pocket money well ahead of the village fair so they could perfect their technique over all of its seven days. Not for the cheap golden coins, but for what they stood for, the fun, the day in the sun, the bait in Deanna Noakes's eyes that if one of them reaped the loud tumble, she'd kiss him behind the waltzers in synch with Elvis Costello. Those were the days. So, perhaps Sherlock –

– no, of course not. Sherlock had been a child of distinction, raised in Switzerland, Chelsea, Eton. Hardly Lestrade's district, those. Gripping the wheel harder, he tried to conjure up a consulting toddler, brandishing a glass of milk as he deduced Nanny's unrequited passion for the herdsman. Or clockmaker. Or local Willy Wonka. Oh fuck, he was hopeless at this. And how could he ask Sherlock what he'd been like at five, eight, eleven, _sixteen_, without sounding like a Freud wannabe or, worse, one of those press hounds his son hated with a passion? _And what were you doing in the years from_ – oh, bother. Here was the place, anyway.

Sherlock, already seated and menu-ed when he came in, glanced up with his usual twitch of a smile. "You're on a case," were his greetings words as Angelo, hurrying to the door, practically shook Lestrade out of his coat.

Lestrade sat down with a non-committal "Yeah".

"Good! We're settled, then. The detective inspector had better have the –" and Sherlock, one hand raised as if he was conducting the order, spouted a flow of elastic dipthongs. Lestrade tagged 'Rome' on to 'Eton' and nodded haphazardly. "And I'll have the _scaglie di grana_," Sherlock concluded grandly, scooping up the menus and handing them to Angelo just as Lestrade was stretching his arm across the table.

Angelo's blinky stare morphed almost instantly into an understanding smile, but Lestrade's eye had been quicker.

"And what's that?" he inquired. Whether Sherlock considered himself in on the new case _de facto_ or was still trying to locate the baffling digging fork, even after Mrs Rounders had confirmed his deductions, was a moot point. What was a given was that he'd be getting a decent meal for once. With bread. And greens. And his Da. His request met with ominous silence, Lestrade set his chin and smiled amiably at Angelo.

"Make it a double order, yeah? What's good enough for my son here is good enough for me. I guess."

Angelo, caught between a rock and a hard place (or memories of one, if Sherlock's gossip was to be trusted) bowed his head in defeat. "Shaved parmesan," he muttered. "I'll bring you both the Chef's special, Chief Inspector... _Non m'avette mai ditto che quest'era tu padre_" – this a deep-bellied whisper in Sherlock's direction, before Angelo bolted off kitchenwards.

"_E mi padre padrone_," Sherlock snapped back, crossing his arms compactly above his plate for all, staff, habitués and a few decorative cured hams, to see.

"Oi! What did you just –"

"That you're, like, his commander and father." Young Billy, Angelo's aide, was setting grissini sticks next to their glasses. "Man, I feel you."

This, apparently, was for Sherlock.

At least they were giving Angelo a chance to make it to _Time Out_'s list of fun-lunch stops, Lestrade reflected as he crossed eyes with the sweet old thing sipping up her coffee in the opposite window corner. She smiled and made a few quick passes over the bowl of plastic fruit on the window ledge. Gotcha loud and clear, he signalled back: parenting, indeed, was rather like juggling four oranges _and_ a banana. And, since they were deep into Sherlock territory, a sea urchin. Add a Molotov or two for good measure, and _what the ever-blessed fuck was he supposed to do now_? Unfortunately, Angelo's return had to curtail what in Lestrade's opinion was rather high-skilled semaphore, using the grissini sticks.

Meanwhile, Sherlock's tight-lipped moue could have supported an anvil, and the rest of face was darkening pretty fast. Not figuratively either. Surely he couldn't be – Lestrade leant forward to check. Bloody hell. He could. And was. Holding his breath like a five-year-old in a huff.

The oldster gave them both a pitying look, tore her paper napkin neatly in two and twisted the halves around her index fingers. More sign language followed, Lestrade scrunching his eyes in concentration. Looked like she was telling him either to finish the job himself and strangle the urchin, or go for diversion tactics and tell him a story.

He tapped his wine glass with his own irate forefinger. Jesus Christ, woman! He could hardly relate the Clarence case in public, could he, not when it was more red-taped at the moment than a Chinese festival lantern?

A coffee spoon nodded pertly at the cinema façade across the street. Judging from the swarm of candied pinks and blues, it had just launched into a Disney reviv –

Oh.

_Oh_.

Right. Lestrade speared his fork through a layer of tomato, basil, pesto, chicken and baby mozzarella, loading his right cortex with vitamins, and went for the dare. You never knew what Sherlock might or might not have deleted, but it was worth a try. Better than having to explain to John and the Met why his first bonding trip had ended in infanticide through self-induced asphyxiation. Pray for me, he beseeched the old lady mentally, and, before he could have second thoughts, carried on loudly, "So. Want to hear about that case of mine, kid?"

The blue glare could have chilled his Pinot Grigio. "Not if it's anything like your gastric routine, _Dad_."

"Predictable, you mean? Oh, I don't know. Bit of a weirdo, that one. Old old tale from before I knew you, but we're combing through a few of those right now. Spring cleaning, you might say. Does the name Snyder ring any bell with you?"

Sherlock, arms still twined into a deadlock, shook his head.

"Nah, didn't think it would. They couldn't keep it totally press-proof, but they did manage to hush up most of the gristly stuff. So. It all began when a bloke named Kingson, one of those City bigwigs, got up a private fashion show. All for the greater good, of course, benefits to go to cancer research, and so he packed his place full of toffs paying quality fees to ogle all the quality girls. And among them was this girl, this blonde beauty, well, ashblond from what I could make of the surveillance tapes, showing off a – what's that name again – oh yeah. A Karl Lager outfit."

"Lager_feld_, Lestrade." Voice still hoity-toity, but at least he had to be breathing.

"Whatever. Ella Snyder, she said her name was, but the odd thing was, no one seemed to know her for all her success, and the Karlsberg people later swore they'd never sent her in the first place. Anyway, there was some sort of midnight poll and most of the blokes voted for her, but when they called on Ella to come up and get her prize, she couldn't be found. They searched and searched, and they couldn't find her, and in the end all they found was one of her evening shoes. Trendy plexiglass affair, with what Donovan tells me is called a wedge heel."

Sherlock yawned pointedly.

"And her foot still in it."

From the opposite corner came a sound of muffled clapping, but Lestrade didn't heed it. Sherlock was gazing at him, mouth half-agape, eyes startled bright and alert.

"Had they cut all the way round the fibular?"

"You bet."

"What was the cancer research lab involved?"

Lestrade leant over and, smiling, tapped his knife gently against Sherlock's plate.

* * *

><p>"But don't you see?" Sherlock's excitement was palpable, if only because he insisted on working his deductions through a mouthful of zucchini. "Kingson wasn't calling her 'pumpkin' at all; he was pressing for a deal! Pumpkin alkaloids have been on the forefront of cancer research for the last five years or so, and if that Ella had high connections in the medical mafia..."<p>

"Oh, yeah. Definitely a godfather backstage." Lestrade was trying hard to pull in his exultant grin, more at Sherlock's newfound appetite than at their joint venture in gorying up a children's classic. Vandalism, he supposed some would call it, but as he took in Sherlock's face, lit up with excitement and a lick of tomato sauce at the corner of his mouth, all Lestrade thought was, Magic still does it for me. Magic said it all – his own quiet flare of pride as past stretched out into present and he found himself, well, _nurturing_ Sherlock for lack of a better word. Looking at Sherlock's half-empty plate and wondering if he might be amenable to tiramisu. The peacefulness around their table, as the gravelly outside light suddenly gave to a rush of sun that poured all over the tables, the old coat rack, the corner granny sipping the _grappa_ she'd ordered to last her through the tale, the warm smells, Sherlock's pattern of breadcrumbs over the tablecloth...

...and the shadow impressing itself over the table, the crumbs and Lestrade's hour of peace.

"So all you have to do is contact – oh, piss off, Mycroft."

"Manners, Sherlock." On Lestrade's part, it was a long-acquired reflex response. Though God knew he'd have gladly echoed his son rather than the other man. How like Mycroft Holmes to walk into his story without so much as a by-your-leave.

"Thank you, Inspector. Do forgive me for intruding upon an idyllic scene, but this is an emergency call. Sherlock, I need you."

"Can't." Sherlock glared up at his brother, who was appropriating the last slice of garlic bread. "I'm on a case."

"Really?" Mycroft's eyes were spidering over the remnants of their lunch. "I doubt it. The only thing closely resembling a crime scene here is your plate. Anyway, this is a matter of national importance. A Certain Someone, an old friend among my employers, has had a Certain Something purloined from her, causing her great trouble of soul. And there's the little matter of her domestic entourage."

"I don't think Sherlock deals in divorce cases, Mr Hol –"

"I'm sure you can find Her bloody corgi yourself, Mycroft. As you can see, I'm rather busy right now."

"I'm afraid I must insist. Better for you to solve this quickly in the interest of all parties. You must have noticed the date?"

Lestrade saw how Sherlock's gaze became fixed and almost shameful. He waited for a comeback that never came.

"What's this about the date?"

"Nothing that must concern you, Lestrade. Sherlock knows I have his best interests at heart."

"He means my trust fund." Sherlock's voice came out smaller than nature, and he didn't look at Lestrade as he spoke. "Father ensured that Mycroft would be the single trustee after his death, so by interests he really means the allowance that comes to me every month under his supervision. When I don't do what he tells me, it... meets with unexpected delays."

"That so?" No longer an hour of peace, then. Quite the contrary, in fact, as Lestrade put down his napkin and swivelled on his chair to confront a close-faced, stony-hued Holmes senior. The kid is right, he thought suddenly. Mycroft was an oyster of the first water, an oyster with a delusion of grandeur. Time to grab the prising knife. "Why wasn't I told about this? I always assumed you lived off your cases, clients, whatever."

"Oh, my dear Inspector. Are we living in the same London? But I can assure you that Sherlock is vastly exaggerating. Anyway, this is a matter that only extends to the Holmes estate, I'm afraid. Sherlock, I'll be waiting for you in the car."

"I think not." Lestrade struggled to keep his voice clear of vinegar – oh, good one. "If it's a matter that extends to Sherlock's resources and Sherlock's next-of-kins, you'll find I'm very much concerned. Come on, Mr Holmes. You can't expect me to take charge of him and then sit back and let you play bad cop when you like. If it's an issue of trust, then Sherlock must decide who gets his. I'd rather my son didn't depend on anyone for his pocket money, but that's up to him. Meanwhile –"

"Money is boring," Sherlock chipped in. He was looking at Lestrade with a new gleam in his eyes. "You should hear John going on and on about bills and expenses and my taxi fares. He says his blog motto should be YES, WE CAB. But I don't mind you being my trustee. It sounds – right."

In the silence that followed, Lestrade wondered if what he felt was his heart hugging his rib cage. Well, probably not. He'd have to do something about that mad metaphor spree of his. But he did give Sherlock's wrist a quick squeeze before carrying on.

"Meanwhile, the Met want to get you on an official footing, Sherlock. It's been a bit chaotic since word got around that you're my son, what with Dimmock's old mother showing up at _his_ crime scenes, and Gregson's Swedish au pair next – bit of a distraction for the lads, that. You'll be a paid assis –" he gulped back the word in time. "A consulting expert, with consulting fees. So if you like, you can help your brother find that kidnapped dog –"

"Technically, a hound." Mycroft's voice was still bland, but it did not escape Lestrade's notice that he was patting his face with Sherlock's napkin. The tomato added quite a Cain-like touch to his brow. "Her Majesty stopped breeding corgis five years ago. Basket Bill is a Ridgeback puppy."

Sherlock's "What?" upped Lestrade's "Who?" by a number of decibels, making the corner granny drop her chequebook. Sherlock looked as he always did when presented with a brand new weird case. Cheeks flushed, eyes glazed, he rose from his chair as if levitated into verticality, turned to Mycroft and uttered in solemn tones "_Reaching back_ to you very very soon, dahling."

"Glad to hear it," Mycroft answered rather drily, but Sherlock had already run to the door, never looking back. Lestrade bit his lip and signalled for Angelo to bring the check. "Now, what about that tiramisu, Detective Inspector?"

* * *

><p>They had a few more halcyon days. But Lestrade, when he reflected on them, knew that he should have seen the storm coming.<p>

He took Sherlock to watch football in his favorite pub, and that went well enough, though he wished Sherlock had waited till they'd gone home to deduce that Britain's favorite right forward was on steroids. Still, he'd managed to dodge most of the pint glasses. As amends, Sherlock took him to Covent Garden to see _Tosca_, which was typical Sherlockian tact if you considered the pitch, but never mind that, the music was quite zippy to Lestrade's ear.

He considered telling Ma about Sherlock, but the doctors had been franker than usual about her heart condition and he didn't know how she'd take it. She hadn't taken the news of his divorce well at all, had accused him of running truant once too many. Still, this was a thought for the future.

He wondered if Sherlock, at some future point, would call him anything else than Lestrade.

Then Moriarty struck again, sweeping the ground beneath their feet and jeopardizing all their futures with one final, lethal pun.


	4. Chapter 4

_God, it has been a tussle-of-war with that story. Sorry to have kept you waiting, guys. One more chapter to go, and we're pushing a cautious toe into Angstland, but I can safely promise a happy ending._

_Also, a quick reminder that I'm not taking the BBC road to Reichenbach, as this was planned before S2. _

The bolt, when it fell at last, did not fall with a boom, a bang, or, to revive young Greg's once-favourite lyrics, a jumpin' jack flash. Born and raised in the Moriarty school, the boom knew better than to go the way of all flash.

Instead, it chirped.

Lestrade heard it on his way home, under a six o'clock sky where the shadows had been gathering hard and fast on each side of the sun, pulling it down as if they just couldn't wait to get to the bottom of the day. Me too, Lestrade thought, and dropped his eyelids briefly against the stretch of livid electric grey, temples still aching under the pressure of nothing achieved. It had been a headachy day, squandered doing what they called _office stakeout_ in Met lingo, when every task went on and on and round and round until everything felt like a glutinous middle and you just longed to pin the effing tail on the donkey's effing – oh Christ, not now. Not again.

But his hand was already closing on the phone, going through the motions. One dip of the eyes and he was slouching back against the headrest, smiling.

Texts from John did that lately. As a rule, they were short, salutary and point-blank – bit like the man himself, Lestrade had come to reflect fondly. He had rashly imparted his newfound wisdom to John on one of their pub meet-ups, with a few pints on board, to which John had replied with commendable modesty that _S and I backed into Tesco by doting crow_, followed by _Crowd, blast it_, then _Meant that fuvatgirly_, then _Holding off posse with frzen cutlets. S won't sign baby prats_. and finally _Prams. Sherlock Holmes prams now. Mayday_. hardly bespoke of top-hole communication skills.

Taking advantage of the next red light, Lestrade checked the text. He could do with a night out, or even a night in, now that Mrs Hudson had been let in on the Big Reveal. (She had all but hoisted him off the ground in her slender arms, babbled of A Father to His Men and Secret Identity Identity – the Mesdames Hudson and Turner, it appeared, both knew their TV Tropes to a tee – and produced a spare key.) Could even do with one of Mrs H's little pick-you-ups, as she liked to call them. Little pull-you-ins, he thought in his private fund of wisdom, because if that lemongrass tea had ever been kith or kin to lemon, he was Sir Elton John. Still, beat Nurofen at the end of the day.

_Check my blog asap._

Oh-oh. Touch of business here. Lestrade parked the car, bracing himself against the first pelts of rain that soaked his mac collar and plastered it to his neck in a cold mould. When he got to his street, he found that the rain had dulled all the colours, leaving only the big yellow M across his door, with its promise of belly comfort, donuts, the nondescript warmth of strangers who'd never think of asking after his day. It tugged at him, and Lestrade's feet shuffled before the lighted façade. But.

_Check my blog asap._

The air in the flat chilled his shoulders even after he'd peeled off his mac and headed to his room. He needed a cuppa. He needed a hot water bottle. He needed a son that would stop tinkering with his boiler when the only derivative to boredom was to cosplay Henri Landru. What he had was an aging laptop and a faint tweak to his heart.

_22nd of April_

_The Nobbled Bachelor_

Because John's text had been – short, and not short. Curt, yeah. Short of urgent. Lestrade knew urgent, worked at its beck and call and could trace its pulse even in a toneless call. But John hadn't called. Hadn't even updated his blog, and Lestrade knew about the case already. Not one of his (the CS knew better than to assign Greg Pick-of-the-Press Lestrade to a media-related case) but the woman in charge ranked among John's faithful readers. He skimmed over the post and ran a hand through his bedraggled hair, raising the spikes and tufts of former years.

_This one you've surely heard about_, John had written. _Chances are you watched it live on Channel Five. The murder, I mean. We did, because Sherlock has been reading about bees, don't ask me why, and said last night he wanted to compare their courting ritual with ours. (No, really, don't.)_

And once again Lestrade's blood grew warm at the words, his unease suspended and soft-edged. Because Sherlock had done his research. Because the final picture in that scrapbook Lestrade had given him a month or so ago was one of Ma in her garden, seeding chamomile between the crazy-paving slabs, her four beehives lined up against the garden wall. Lestrade had taken that pic, so he knew there was actually a bee resting on Ma's head, though with all the sun and her wild white hair it had come out a mere fleck on the film – until submitted to a high-functioning magnifying glass.

_I pointed out there _was_ a difference, because even reality telly draws the line against suicide by happy ending, so he mustn't expect to see the human drone flop down and die before his eyes. Of course, reality telly had to prove me wrong when rich, handsome, made-in-Chelsea Bobby St Simon, Channel Five's Chosen One, keeled over into the flower bed less than a minute after kissing his twenty-fifth bride hello._

_I say hello, you say goodbye_, was Lestrade's irreverent thought as he scrolled on. He knew the particulars of the case all too well. Tall, buxom 'Hatty Doran' had stepped out of the black Cadillac and walked up to the lucky man with a let's-get-started stride. Then she had put up a hand to her honey-blonde hair, tossed it loose in the best Veronica Lake tradition, mwah-mwahed at Mr St Simon's cheek and pushed a gilded hairpin all the way into his left ventricle, leaving him in no shape to carpe the diem and pick the bride. The stroke had been masterful, causing the poor sod to blink and gurgle under the crew's somewhat blasé gaze. Hattie, meanwhile, had used the precious seconds to reach the posh villa behind him, turn a corner and somehow vanish into thin air while everyone else was regrouping in the rudbeckias.

_No one has seen or heard of the 38-year-old private gym instructress since. Her DNA hasn't been matched as yet, and her Chelsea address turned out to be a decoy. Yesterday, Sherlock was asked if he could help trace the murderess, and though he hasn't been able to find her yet, he did spot an interesting clue. While Ms Doran's signature is fairly consistent on her (fake) passport and the various application forms she had to fill for the show, in one case she misspelled her first name as 'Hathi'. Now Hathi, you may remember, is the name of the elephant colonel in The Jungle Book. Sherlock is positive that this slip of the pen betrays an affinity between the killer and one or several of the following:_

_1. The British Army_

_2. The _crème de la crème_ British Army_

_3. Wild fauna_

_5. The South Asian subcontinent_

_5. Walt Disney_

_... but says he needs more data before he can start eliminating the improbable._

_Today was marked by little progress as Sherlock's brother turned down Sherlock's request that he liaise for us with Save the Elephants (M, if you're reading this, he didn't mean it _quite_ the way you heard it.). He has now bagsied the sofa, where he is doing his celebrated Thinking Sarcophagus act. I'm thinking bangers and mash for dinner._

_So far, so good. Well, not so good casewise, but nothing to ruffle the father's fears underneath the commander. Lestrade flicked a raindrop off the tip of his nose and tackled the comments._

_Harry Watson_

_Well, bang a drum and fuck a duck. And you say I'm the one who drunk-blogs._

_John Watson_

_Harry, I'm really trying to keep this a family blog._

_Harry Watson_

_... So what? I'm sodding family!_

_Bill Murray_

_Mate, I'd be on the look-out if I were you. They'll be searching for a fill-in even as you type!_

_Molly Hooper_

_You didn't say I did the post-mortem! He looked dead gorgeous!_

_Molly Hooper_

_How do you edit your comments here?!_

_Sherlock Holmes_

_Really, John. Blogging about a case in progress is bad enough; there's no need to trumpet my private interests to the British public._

_Sherlock Holmes_

_And to watch 'murder live' smacks of a contradiction in terms._

_John Watson_

_Could have done worse. Could have given in and let Mrs H do the whole write-up in MiC slang, for one thing._

_Sherlock Holmes_

_... I'll be thankful for small mercies._

_Sherlock Holmes_

_And your narrative skills seem to be on the mend, John._

_Mrs Hudson_

_OMG, boys, you're totes dorbs!_

_Anonymous_

_Oh, Sherlock, Sherlock. How many Rich Bachelors must I have stabbed to drive my point home? Third clue had better be the charm, handsome. Are you really so fallible that you can't take a hint? Or are you afraid to take a fall, a splatable, turntable fall, a direct fall from upright to horizontal? But wait. Flip a fall, kiddies, turn it inside out, and what's on the other side? All together now. A LAUGH!_

_Time to choose a side, Sherlock. Or has all work and no play made you a dull boyo?_

_Sherlock Holmes_

_Interesting. I... think I've got your point._

_Anonymous_

_Finally, he's joined the dots! Sooo. Last one up is a sissy?_

_Sherlock Holmes_

_Last one up, in my experience so far, is a winner._

_Anonymous_

_:-P_

_Better get getting there, then. Better for everyone involved. Mr Holmes._

* * *

><p>The night rain was thick and everywhere when he let himself out again. It pushed into his eyes while he waited on the kerb, anger bristling across the tears, Sherlock's voice briskly aloof in his ear. He hung up before the third word and let the rain have its way with him, eyes crinkled against the yellowgold floater at the edge of vision.<p>

A woman passing by started, forgetting to chitter on into her phone as she watched the grey-haired man glare at the MacDonald's sign. He was muttering under his breath, and she caught the sardonic words before the lights came on, the cars slowed down, and the rattle-drums of rain covered the rest. 'Copper up,' they were, and she giggled correspondingly into her phone. 'He said Copper Up,' she explained to the friend with whom she would soon be eating tender sushis, the man and his anger forgotten. The friend said to be careful, London these days was packed with more nuts than a box of Kellogg's, and what the police had to say about that she couldn't say for sure.

* * *

><p>"Haven't seen head or coat tails of him, no." John stepped out of the kitchen with a pot of coffee, and Lestrade gave in to the rough soothing smell, curling grateful fingers on his mug. "And before you ask, he's not answering my calls either."<p>

Lestrade sighed into the curl of steam. He had kept the evening at arm's length till now, and while he was beginning to feel the cramp, he didn't want to let go yet. "Okay. Right. Better start at the beginning. The first message came at three. You didn't notice it then?"

"Nope. Busy day at the surgery. Hay fever, church picnic diarrhoea, senior cricketers gone on rampage, take your pick. I took a break at six, and there it was." John's eyes flicked to his across the low table top and the untouched drink, hard lapis blue. "Anonymous. As if."

"You sure? That blog of yours is getting big, John. For all we know, it could be a hoax."

"Sherlock doesn't think so."

"Sherlock –" Lestrade's voice caught at the back of his throat, and he cleared it quickly. "You know how he is. He'll go tit for any rat's tat if he feels there's a challenge involved."

"No, Greg. Sorry, but no." John rose, and Lestrade saw how the casual slope of his arm had tautened, fingertips brushing his hip absently. John was entirely calm, his words a patient flow, but John was prepared. Had been prepared from the moment he'd texted Lestrade. "Trust me. Once you've heard Moriarty, heard him at close quarters...there's no mistaking that voice. That viciousness. Trust me, it's him all right. Live on the Web tonight, the spider. Out – there."

He knew that John's wave of hand wasn't intended for the four walls and Mrs Hudson's grunge Victorian wallpaper, that she said was "sweetly tulipy" though to Lestrade it looked more like Martian artichokes on the warpath. But with the swerve of John's hand, the reality of the room impressed itself on Lestrade: the madcap tumble of objects that spoke louder than any confession, all the small touches and alliances that proclaimed John and Sherlock as a twosome, down to the gentle lingering of a blue dressing gown over a red-and-grey tartan blanket or the Daily Express poised open on a music stand. When the nest-building had begun at 221B, there was no telling, but in that flashstill, Lestrade saw, Lestrade observed, and Lestrade knew he would carry the fight to its last raw stand before he allowed anyone to blight the nest.

"Let's get getting there, then." In the white glow of the lamps he took in John's wince and squeezed his arm in apology. "You read the psychotic little scrote. Same old riddle-me-this, but the quip about the Rich Bachelor got me thinking. Remember that anonymous comment on Sherlock's site, two months ago?"

John nodded tightly. "Sherlock never paid much attention when it came, but I did. Reaching back to you. And then the case with the dog. Ridgeback. It's a tie-up, yeah. But what does that leave us with?" The air rustled, and something landed on Lestrade's knees with a muffled thump. He picked up the copy of London A-Z but didn't open it. "I'm putting my money on London, because he's done it before. Took us down memory lane – remember the pink phone? Except I don't know where to look. Ridge Avenue, Ridge Drive, Ridge Court. Road, Hill, Gate, Park... God knows how many of them you'd find just inside of England."

"One hundred and thirty-four." Lestrade set the book down gently. "Twelve in Greater London, so we're starting there. Got in touch with most of the Borough Commands and Chaaya – that's Banerji – is tracing his phone. MacGrawth is tracking the comment; won't go far but I'm taking any baby step on the offer. Sally, poor kid, was the first to think of the Ridgeback bikes, so she's sorting manufactures. She volunteered." He countered John's slow blink of eyelashes with a smirk, the first of the evening. "What? I have my Regulars."

"Told him." A muted chuckle. "That he would have to run with the Pack and hunt with the Pack, from now on."

Point-blank, Lestrade thought, point-blank. John Watson would know his Kipling, with or without a case. Lestrade himself wasn't too big on books, but his childhood readings had caught up with him in the last lean years, and the much-loved words spilt out before he knew he was speaking them.

"I have the Pack and I have thee; why should I be afraid?"

And Mowgli had been a winner, Lestrade thought, willed John to think as his phone stirred alight against his chest. Two matching descriptions in Lambeth, one in Islington. But Sherlock's skills were unmatched, and Lestrade stayed poised.

"Well, he doesn't have me now." A matt-eyed John, his words tipped with steel, his head lowered as if he was addressing his own two hands, clenched fast on either knee. Looking down at them, Lestrade was reminded of the old saying that a man's two fists, put together, gave you the measure of his heart. "God, it's square one all over again. Sherlock bloody Holmes blind-dating a killer and taking the pill as an afterthought. Oh, fuck. Sorry, Greg, that was – but you don't know how stark, staring, _raving_ it makes me, the thought of him running off on his own. Just like before. And to Moriarty, of all killers."

Lestrade checked his phone again. "Midnight. He has till midnight to come clear, then I'm siccing Mr Government on him." And Mycroft would make him eat humble pie this time, no doubt, but Lestrade couldn't care less. Hell, he'd gobble a whole pudding and face Sherlock's outrage if it got him a clear answer as to the boy's whereabouts. Jesus. God. Mary and the holy cast. He was beginning to understand why the Almighty had found it more than enough to raise an only Son in a span of two millenniums.

"Yeah. And when he comes back –"

"Yeah," Lestrade chimed quietly. He knew the answer to that one. Sherlock would come back and he would be claimed, with all the relevant sound and fury, but claimed nonetheless. Just like before. Just like Mowgli. Bouncing off fire in hand, a straight line to the tiger's lair, and even if Lestrade made it a miraculous first to the lair and stood with outstretched arms and a NO TRESPASSING placard round his neck, Sherlock would already be a leap ahead. The drugs had been bad, but this – these danger nights – was worse. Because fire burns, danger burns, and Sherlock didn't give a fuck if the whole jungle turned into a blazing barbecue. Seen in that light, the game full on, Sherlock felt less like a son and more like a... a changeling, right. Completely far away and as incompatible with all that Lestrade held dear as his fire-clear eyes were with Lestrade's earthbound ones.

And still, Lestrade knew that he would claim the changeling, again and again, seven times seventy-seven if required, to hold and forgive and warm back into a son in his heart, which now ran its own maddened track. He straightened up.

"I'd better go see if there's anything new. They're all pulling an extra shift for him."

"I'll wait. God knows I hate it. Feels like the mud end of war all over again."

As did the night rain, still hugging John's windows for dear life. Lestrade retaliated by giving John a stiff little hug of his own, joining word to action with a 'Keep you in the loop, then'. A first, that – John's and his effusions were usually restricted to the occasional manly pat, clap, shake or thump according to context – but there is a time for everything, and a season for everything, and now was as good a time as ever to give Doctor Watson a speed-blessing. The Talk could wait until they'd located Sherlock.

* * *

><p>The warmth was a surprise. He was barely through the door when it swathed him like an invisible cloud, leaving him foggy-eyed with a nice prickling sensation all over his neck and cheeks. Looked like someone had set his boiler –<p>

"Where the hell have you been?" he hollered, not bothering to inspect the doorframe. Sherlock had been given a key to Lestrade's flat in bygone days, after his first and fruitless attempt to lockpick his way in when he was high as a grasshopper with a bad case of hiccups. He had begun by picking the wrong door and giving Mrs Kemhuff, Lestrade's bed-ridden neighbour, an unexpected treat. "Came right at me with his great big screwdriver. Nice bit of shirt, too," was Mrs Kemhuff's version of the scrape, told with _sotto voce_ relish to her daily visitor, Lestrade, and whoever had stopped by in the following days.

"Here." Sherlock, a straight-backed shadow before the curtained window, his hands in his pockets, did not raise his voice. Lestrade exhaled slowly, dizzy with relief and thermal shock. He fumbled for his phone and a quick text. _Here with me. Might keep him for the night_.

"And would it have killed you to let me know? D'you have any idea of the ruckus you caused tonight? John's mad with you, not half, not that I blame him. Those comments on his blog – Look, you'd better call him first and apologise properly. I don't know who that fucker was, or why you took it into your head to play along –"

"Lestrade." Sherlock turned his face, slatted with the half-light that filtered through the blinds, and Lestrade realised only then that none of the lamps had been turned on in the living room. Sherlock took a step Lestrade couldn't hear and motioned to the couch almost diffidently. "Can we –sit a moment? I know this is the part when you box my ears and feed me pastry, but I'd rather we put it off until my return. At least the pastry."

"Your return." Lestrade's feet coaxed him across the floor and up to the couch, where he fell in a graceless heap. Automatically, he reached for the tight spot between the arm and the couch cushion, only to find that Sherlock had beaten him to the cache and was offering his own lighter.

"Ta." The scald of tar on his tongue made him cough. He closed his eyes on the second intake, deep and pungent. Needed. Unwelcome. He looked for a crevice of light in the whole evening and, not finding any, shifted so that he could feel Sherlock's pointy, tangible elbow at his side.

"So. Jim Moriarty."

"Obviously. I put it to DI Patterson that Ms Doran was, in fact, Jim's pet henchman. It's fascinating, really. An ex-army man with unheard-of expertise in camouflage –"

"Sherlock." Lestrade opened his eyes, summoning his last fund of decibels. It wasn't fair, not a bit. The ordinary fathers whom he had come to despise a little in his hours of pride, working along Sherlock, forbade their ordinary sons to go night-clubbing, or drink at home, or use their car. They didn't have to awe a six-foot genius into being good and letting who would be clever when it came to rabid psychopaths. "Don't even think of sidetracking me," Lestrade growled, trying to catch Sherlock's eye behind the elusive smoke screen. "I've had enough of that for one night. Did you crack his message?"

Sherlock did not answer.

"Yeah, well. Kudos for not making tonight an all-out mess-up. I guess. Where is he?"

This time he heard the step, the nervous, perceptible tattoo of Sherlock's foot on the floor. But Sherlock still kept silent, kept up the smoke and shadows, and Lestrade's weariness got the better of him. He stubbed out the half-smoked cig on the floor, not caring if it singed a board. "Why did you come here, then? If you're so set on doing everything your own way, never mind that John and I and half the Met have been eating our blood over you" – the old, odd French phrase his Da's father had used sometimes, and his Da years later, oddly resurfacing. "What d'you expect me to do? Drag you all the way to the Yard and clap you in a cell? Because I would, if I had a crap's worth of faith that you'd stay there as long as you're told. God, Sherlock." He swallowed against the tar and saliva, conscious that his next words would be a plea. "At least, take John with you."

"You said –" Sherlock was cradling his cigarette to his mouth, both hands cupped before his face, but his voice came out with unexpected clarity. With unexpected sadness, too, cutting Lestrade's plea there and then. "You once said you would tell me what's right."

"Yes," Lestrade said, not allowing himself to hope.

"If there was a threat." Sherlock's voice was its neat self, but Lestrade could hear his breath quicken into a hum. Not nerves, then. _Fear_. "If I thought that someone close to me was threatened, was possibly under a death sentence unless I went alone. Would you still hold it against me to go?"

Yes, Lestrade thought stubbornly, challenging his own shadowed room with a set face. Yes, yes, yes. Then shame struck, because Sherlock's someone had received a hug and a blessing from him not three hours before. He shook his head.

"That's something for John to answer, not I."

"But I'm asking you."

"Then you're asking too much." Lestrade turned and grabbed a handful of curls, pulling until Sherlock had to bend his face to him and their foreheads were touching. This, this was the bond he'd worked on all these months, his claim, his _We be of the same blood, you and I_, and how like Sherlock to meet him halfway only by forcing an impossible choice on him. "Look, there have to be ways I can help. We'll think of something. I... I won't tell John if you like. But don't go. Not tonight. It's getting late and your old man is too old and grey and knackered to make sense right now. C'mon, lad. Gimmee that."

Sherlock gave a little huff of laugh. "Ever since I've known you, you've been going on about your grey hair."

"That's what old men do, sunshine. Be wrinkled and white by the time you have kids of your own."

"I don't intend to – Lestrade, are you trying to sidetrack me?"

"Well, yeah. But I don't mind telling you about the birds and bees if you like. Heard you had a vested interest in some of them." He waited, but Sherlock did not rise to the bait. His forehead was growing heavier, though, and Lestrade tugged gently on the dark curls until it slipped onto his shoulder.

"Hush worrying, kid." The words were familiar, though he was too tired to remember if they'd been spoken to him or by him, back in the days when a strung-up, itchy Sherlock was already battling sleep. "Yesterday is almost over."

* * *

><p>When he opened his eyes, the day was churning a pale white Spring through the slats. He was lying on the couch in his clothes, a blanket tucked in on either side.<p>

Sherlock was nowhere visible, but there were traces of him in the kitchen – an empty cup and an open notebook. Pages had been torn out, crumpled up after a few lines. Lestrade smoothed one over with his fist and recognised Sherlock's long-legged writing.

_Lestrade. I have made every disposition of my property_

This time, he called Mycroft.

_TBC_


	5. Chapter 5

_With apologies for the slow update, and my thanks to the new followers! We're now facing a little angst, but not too much, and we can all guess how this story ends. _

_Planned and begun before S2, so don't be too surprised to find a waterfall in this chapter. _

In the end, in a rather un-British show of unfairness, Mycroft blamed the fish.

For the fish was really as innocent as a newborn lamb. In fact, the fish itself more or less qualified as a newborn, which was why it had drawn Mycroft away from the old-boy gloom of the Diogenes to a small office in Number Ten, where the fish was now being examined – figuratively. All the more as it figured on a four-inch newspaper picture, dangling from the hook, line and sinker of the great personage usually refered to as OMW in Mycroft's business correspondence. _Our Man in Westminster_, an acronym tried and true though he often suspected Anthea, when she texted out said correspondence with her eyes lowered and a Da Vinci smile, of rephrasing it in her head as _Outta My Way_.

"His Principal Private Secretary swears that it was a six-month mackerel," Mycroft's first interlocutor, a grey and graying eminence known on the premises as _the_ Featherstonehaugh, was hissing. "Says they had it in pâté for starters. But now the _Daily Mail_ has got hold of an expert from Geneva – a _Swiss_ sea doctor, would you believe this – and his opinion is that it's well and truly underage. A sprog. A sea toddler. A mackerelet. A fish."

"Ah. Yes, this is...unfortunate." Mycroft's quick-change mouth drooped in suitable concern. He was aware that in another timeframe, the unholy mackerel would have followed its natural pâtéd course to OMW's stomach juices in full anonymity. But this was March 2010, with the Shanghai Universal Exhibition and its Haibo mascot in full swing. "Save the Sea" was the cause du jour, Madame Brigitte Bardot and the Duchess of York had just sworn off red tuna for themselves and their little cats, and the general public was more than ready to boo at the baby-snatcher. Mycroft leant back in his seat, furrowed his brow into a pensive knot, and prepared to enjoy the fun.

More and wetter hissing followed, showcasing "eco-conscious", "EU Secretaryship", "Greenpeace", "Switzerland" (twice), and Mycroft's private _bête noire_, "sportsmanship".

"Still, it could be worse," his second interlocutor, a shy, donnish little adviser added helpfully. "Think, only think, if it had been a _porpoise_."

Mycroft's private mobile chose that moment to buzz forth an incoming text. He cast it a quick glance. Dear him. The Detective Inspector had apparently forgotten his previous restraining order on Mycroft's interference in his and Sherlock's affairs and was demanding a return call 'asap'. Typical Lestrade, in letter and spirit. Mycroft set the phone to silent mode with a rueful smile to his peers and an inward vengeful grin. Let the man boil an hour or two in his own troubled waters, then. CCTV had spotted Sherlock entering his place yesterday night and nothing since, which meant that all was for the best in the best of all Sherlock-saddled worlds. He himself had another brat, well, sprat to deal with inbetween.

Half an hour later, Mycroft was thoroughly enjoying himself. There had been five more calls from Lestrade. Number Ten's chef had shown up with home roasted coffee, upping his revenge to a dish piping hot. And the talk had reached that desperate, delicious plateau where everyone was groping for front page epiphanies, including the little adviser's proposal that the PM adopt an orphan tuna and raise it as his son.

The door clicked open, letting in Anthea's charming face. Charming and, Mycroft noticed directly, unsmiling. Not even a Da Vinci flicker.

"Sir." She was holding up BlackBerry primly, zealously, and left-handedly. Trouble at hand, Mycroft read, and set down his cup as her arm . "Your Brussels appointment. I'm afraid you need to leave now, or you'll miss your plane by a fair hair."

In the hard flash-still between her words and his intake of breath - _between the idea and the reality, between the emotion and the response_, Father's pet dead poet, dead on, unwelcome – he gave himself to the grip of his mind. This meant that his mind had to be turned into a heart, contracting and dilating in turn under a cold rush of data, faces, funds, risks, tumbling into his veins like a parallel, unparalleled pulse. Ordinary people, people like Lestrade, said "not on my beat" and didn't give the phrase a thought. When it came to Sherlock's safety, Mycroft's brain gave the beat a joyride.

_Five years_, he didn't answer Mr Featherstone's irate "Five minutes!", for it had been that long since he'd last heard the words, and God knew he'd hoped for a longer reprieve. Instead, he rose quietly from his seat, smiled for two, dictated the ten-word dispatch that would lay the unholy mackerel at rest and

There was no Brussels on today's agenda. There was rarely a Brussels at all, because Mycroft had made it clear from the beginning that it was up to the Mahomets of this world to gird their loins and ring up his mountain in their hour of need.

But there was every reason to leave, because _fair hair_ in Anthea's mouth meant _Sherlock_ and _punch it, sir_. Or rather "Sherlock" had meant "fair hair" in age old times, which was why Mycroft had elected it as their red signal, in memory of their own past and his endless teasing of the child whose hair had darkened and darkened while Mother, Father and he all stuck to their mild auburn. A name can turn against you, he had told Anthea upon hiring her as his one-woman team of confidants; looking at her and she had looked at him, shrewd in their mutual understanding. And yet he had turned Sherlock's name into the ultimate code, one that kept every other business on hold while Mycroft put together all the king's horses and all the king's men his brother managed to knock over in his mad run.

Mummy had chosen the name, Mycroft suspected, as a carefree, daredevil attempt at colour camouflage. A magic word, that would make Sherlock a bona fide little Holmes. Except, not. Had Father known, even then? Had the name seeded the first shadow, the first silence that would later become Father not talking for days on, the long-shadowed, long summer days when Sherlock was released from school? The matter had never been raised between them, but it had left Mycroft with an early sense of debt, love, double-dealing, and the bunker worth of silence. He had taken his mixed legacy and acted on it for the best until for until a file named _Greg Simon Lestrade_ was laid before him and he found himself looking at a stranger's face, handsome in an English puggish way, under his close-cropped, still-lingering-dark thatch of hair.

* * *

><p>Silver had it all now. Silver and ash, because Lestrade's face looked as crimpled as it was possible for a face to be. But tough, Mycroft thought, sitting at the man's desk and listening to his clipped report on the night before, but ungiving. A good man's testimony. A <em>straight-backed<em> face if the image made any sense, which it did for him.

And the man must have found some impossible means of flashing a light right down the twists and turns of his mind, because just as it struck _silver_, Lestrade was saying "...something about my grey hair. He, we, well. Private joke, old favourite. And that was that. Gone by morning, can't say when, can't say where. Or what that psychotic little twerp has in store for him." He crossed to Mycroft's right, leaning over to strike a key on his office computer. "Nobody knows yet. Will you help?"

Mycroft nodded. He scanned the computer screen frozen on John's blog entry and its glut of comments, searching for a pulse, a vein. "Not London, Mr Lestrade –"

"Greg, please."

Mycroft caught the olive branch in his stride and pushed on. "You see, London is yesterday's coup. One where he used John to bait Sherlock. He could do it again, certainly, but like many gamesters and all narcissists he's reluctant to show the same hand twice. He needs to one-up his ante. And I fear very much that his new ante is – Greg Lestrade."

"He plans to use _me_? » Lestrade was all but choking on the pronoun. Mycroft, who knew the feeling though he seldom indulged in the performance, nodded again. "What d'you mean? I'm still here, Mycroft. I'm safe enough here, I'm... I'm... oh. You mean he knows about Sherlock and I."

"Oh, yes." Mycroft poked at a spot on the bright patch of screen. "He's targeting the _Wunderkind_, not the lover. And his clue is here."

"... _a fall, a splatable, turntable fall, a direct fall from upright to horizontal_. I don't see..."

"Few people would," Mycroft murmured, "unless closely acquainted with the classics. Jim Moriarty knows that my brother's knowledge of literature is nil – believe it or not, he used to think that a Bovary was some sort of STI – and he knows that the finer point of stealing lies in covering up your theft. But there's nothing on earth and heaven, Horatio, that Google won't root out for you if you ask nicely. _Splatable_ and _turntable_; yes, these are Mr Moriarty waxing poetic. The rest is a quote."

He glanced at Anthea, whose fingertips had just come to rest on the surface of her own screen. She looked back, shrewd and remote, her Florentine face well in place. But her voice, when she spoke, was gentler than its previous self, gathering them in a loose envelope of sympathy.

"Thomas Hardy, Inspector. _The Return of the Native_."

"Perfidy, thy name is Switzerland. Hmm, Mr Featherstonehaugh for one would agree. Better arrange for take-off now, my dear, we'll sort out longitudes on the fly." Ridgeback, his polyglot brain sang, Richebac, Reichbach. There was always something. There had to be.

"Or Ireland," Greg cut in sharply. "Sounds like a double-edged clue. What if he wants to play this game on his turf? Greens. Bog. Whatnot."

"No, no. Switzerland. Look at the next line."

"_Last one up is a sissy_?"

"Mmm, yes. From the little I've seen of him, Mr Moriarty seems to be an expert in costumed drama. The Sisi films, you will recall, were based on Elizabeth of Austria, whose death by murder in Geneva –"

But Greg was reading on. "_Better for everyone involved_. Everyone involved in – Sherlock's birthplace?"

Mycroft waited.

"_Fuck_" came next, Lestrade's muted, explosive shortcut to feeling as his mouth slackened under the shock. « Oh fuck, that's why he came. To me. Because I'd said to, said to ask and I'd tell him what was right. He didn't come to apologize, not that he did either, no, he came to ask for clearance to, to...And I never saw. Fucking useless, thoughtless, fucking, fuck – I thought he meant John!"

Once upon a time, in an afternoon so far gone it had dimmed to a glimpse of dusk in his mind, Mycroft had shown a bored five-year old how to lace his milk with water to make invisible ink. Warmth does it, he'd told Sherlock after they'd pinched a sheet of Father's Consulatory writing-paper. And then Sherlock, holding Mycroft's hand as he still did in those days, had led a clear-eyed vigil before the oven, never relaxing until the letters had bloomed into pale brown life. Now Mycroft made himself look at Lestrade's face, open and worked with fondness, and it was as if letter after letter took shape there until all of Sherlock's secret writing lay in the open, warmed from the heart.

"Not that I said yes, not even when he said, and, God, never, not now, not in a thousand years, because it's the one thing he doesn't get from me, to cover for his dad. Oh, God help me." Lestrade looked up, eyes fiercely wet, oblivious to the whiplash of sound closing down over their heads. "And God help my idiot boy."

"I live to serve," Mycroft answered drily, but he made a point of looking for his umbrella while Lestrade ruined a decent enough jacket sleeve.

* * *

><p>His third time in Switzerland and, in Lestrade's decided opinion, anything but the charm. First time had been his youthful escapade in Geneva, land of milk and honey and his little wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am interlude in the green lanes of the British Consulate. Second time had been exclusively wham and bam, a wild goose chase (to quote Europol) or Easter egg hunt (to quote a beaming Sherlock) after a bomb hidden in Zurich Airport. Third time was here, now, in this stuffy metal coop, press-ganged on every side by a roaring blue sky that kicked his guts halfway up his lungs at every crosswind. Lestrade thought of their final destination and sickened. Eight hundred feet according to the Oracle safe-buckled next to him, which meant twice their current altitude, topsy-turvy. It felt completely surreal.<p>

"You sure?" he bawled into Mycroft's ear, tact and diplomacy be hanged. Alongside. "I mean, a sodding _waterfall_?"

The roar beat him to Mycroft's answer. Lestrade thought he could make out _Napoleon_, _pyramid_ and something that sounded like _karma of the vertically challenged_. He strained his neck, watching the strange ground as it solidified out of the clouds, brown and white and serrated, then dark pine green, then a stretch of lighter green with a big _H_ marked out in white.

"_H_ for helipad, Greg." Had he been thinking again? A door slid open at his elbow, and he managed a stiff, rickety landing of his own. There were cowpats an inch from his office brogues. And mustard flowers, though he couldn't remember how he remembered the name. The air smelt foreign too, knife-clean, still a touch of winter in the cloud-coloured sky. "You mustn't overrate my field of influence."

But when they reached the fence, the barbed wire had been cut open and there was a car waiting on the road. Another of Mycroft's slippery Leviathans, streamlined, gleaming, dark-paned and – Lestrade's dizziness rose a notch – snow-white. Oh yeah, Switzerland. Where even the doormats were white, as he could see now, chasing one another in the rear-view mirror, and the brown-board chalets, and their red roofs and gentle lace windows, until it felt as if they were skidding along an endless round of postcards and it was all surface, all tricks and mirrors. Sod it, he thought savagely as the path took them up into the air again, loop after loop, sod the entire jaunt into Moriarty's Waterland.

"We'll count ourselves lucky if he ends up sodden, Greg."

Bloody Mycroft, speaking out of turn and a misshapen sense of charity. And Lestrade knew the tune from having preached it from the heart, often and long enough, to every greenhorn on his team. _When I say be prepared, I really mean prepare for the worst-case scenario. Or you'll tear at the seams, lad_. But as the road took them up again into the sky, loop after loop; as the sky thickened once more into a roar and Mycroft's men waved them forth into a cleared entrance, Lestrade's heart clamped shut against the loss. It wouldn't accept then, and it wouldn't accept later, when he turned back to where Mycroft stood, silhouetted grim and hawk-nosed against the rocks, and said –

* * *

><p>"How. How did he take it?"<p>

John Watson was crying. And that, in Lestrade's encyclopaedic history of pain control, was one of the scariest man-made spectacles. The tears did not choke John's voice or twist his features into a putty of pain. Instead, they slid indifferently down John's cheeks, his neck tendons, inside his rumpled shirt collar, leaving a warzone in their trail, red-chafed with what Lestrade knew was pure, undiluted anger. Not at Sherlock (not yet, and never a threat to Sherlock, or Lestrade would have put his foot down on the nest-building from day one), but at life, which had left John once more on the roadside of battle while pulling Sherlock right in to look the cyclone in the eye.

Mrs Hudson was present, so Lestrade didn't offer a hug or a hankie. But he stretched his arm across the kitchen table and placed his fist, his _I don't believe_, close to John's _I don't accept_. They looked down, knowing the fists for what they were, the sign they made. Then John nodded and raised his, touching Greg's knuckles in brief recognition before he wiped his face.

"Said four bruised twigs and a ledge halfway up the rock face weren't enough data. Not when CCTV had spotted two men breaking in and no one legging it out. DNA hardly stood a chance after the midday rain. And Bern was already on the radio, blabbing about a corpse down below. So yeah, Mycroft was all upper lip and reality principle. But..."

"Was he angling his head right or left?" Mrs Hudson, pouring lemongrass comfort. Bless the woman and bless her doubly for pulling a Gunga Din and draping a crotcheted plaid over John's shoulders.

"Left," Lestrade said after giving it some thought.

"Oh, then he was bluffing. Sherlock does it every time I ask after my meat thermometer. And surely, leaving his coat behind would be a Bond One-Liner?"

"A sign he'd defeated Moriarty," John translated for Lestrade. Mrs Hudson, lemoned and grassed up, nodded emphatically. "Yes! A way of saying, you know, 'I need another cover now'. Or 'on a cloak and dagger operation', only he didn't have a dagger to leave along. Such a clever boy."

"Well, I wish he hadn't. It was bloody freezing up there, he'll be catching his death." All three flinched. "God. Sorry. Anyway, we couldn't know when he'd taken it off or why. And Mycroft clearly wanted me out from under his feet, whether he thought his brother dead or alive." Lestrade smiled tightly. "So I gave him just that."

* * *

><p>"Lestrade, you can't <em>stay<em> here!" Mycroft's upper lip was showing perceptible cracks, as was his voice. Lestrade shrugged and remained seated, cigarette hanging from his lips, legs hanging into the chasm. "He's gone, they're both gone, and there's nothing you or I can do in this life that will remedy to it. And it's starting to rain again. This ledge will be a liability in under five minutes."

"Nope." He could feel the void under his feet, as immaterial, brutish and compelling as his own certainty that Sherlock was alive. That his child hadn't come here – damn all the loops and circles – to die, not after they'd made so much headway together and known each other for so little time. Not he, not Sherlock. Not his strange, lambent, secret, unique son.

"Oh, for – _Lestrade_!" The ledge was a one-man prop, too narrow for Mycroft's Praetorian guard to round up and haul him off as a body. To Mycroft's credit, the man still hadn't opened his umbrella. Lestrade drew Sherlock's coat tighter and over his head, bending it to light the cig against the first wet lashes.

"What do you want?" Mycroft was hoarse.

Lestrade made a quick calculation. "Three weeks. All your means."

"If I say yes, will you, for the love of God, get down here?"

Lestrade gave a polite little wave relegating the answer to the more efficient speaker. "Yes," Mycroft rasped after five more seconds, and Lestrade, during the slow, excruciating process of standing on his feet, knew that this would either prove a free voucher to Hell or the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Just now, he felt too drained to place a bet.

* * *

><p>"Knowing Mycroft, there must have been provisos."<p>

"Oh god, yes. Quite the natter we had over these. Hmm, no, not really, they more or less boiled down to three. Number one was that I let him deal with you and Mrs H."

John, still red-eyed and puffy, broke into his usual crinkly grin. "And we can guess how well that went. Thanks, Greg."

"Don't. I could still be wrong, you know. Just – it didn't sit right with me, not telling you how things stood. I mean..."

"Hush, dear. Of course you did the right thing. We'll just have to be Heretics United, won't we? Like the Mormons, only with less wives and whiskers." Mrs Hudson patted his sleeve. "Number two, now. Are we allowed to know about that too?"

"Oh, that. Me taking a three-week leave to let him vet my team, in case Moriarty really had a sniper dog on me. I said three days, Sal in the loop, and to call me every four hours _sharp_."

"That's the way to treat 'em, dear. The rate you're going, you'll have him down on his knees popping the question next. Unless you'd rather skip the question?"

"Mrs Hudson!" God, that woman was worth _his_ weight in gold. John looked almost his old self.

"Well, he hasn't called yet." Greg checked his watch. "I'd better run home and pack if I want to keep my side of the bargain. Officially, Sherlock is on Her Majesty's service, somewhere east of Vladivostock. Will you be all right?"

This time, it was John's cardiganed arm round Mrs Hudson's shoulders, clasped safe and warm. "Fine as rain. Take care of yourself, Greg."

Mrs Hudson tiptoed up to him as he went for the door. "You must allow an old woman her venial sin, dear. Number three?"

"Ah." Lestrade paused, his lips twitching. "Come on, you know Mycroft Holmes as well as I do, if not better. Number Three, obviously, was that I don't tell another living soul about Sherlock."

He looked at her. She looked at him, shrewd in their mutual undestanding.

"Say hello to her from me," Mrs Hudson whispered and closed the door so softly after him that the noise felt like a viaticum, not a separation.

_Tbc - and reviews are always welcome!_


	6. Chapter 6

_Apologies for the long, much too long delay in posting – RL got in in a multitude of ways, especially when my laptop crashed down with 2000 words of fic inside, unsaved. Bit daunting. But we're almost there. Again, all my thanks to those of you who favved, reviewed, etc. You're lovely people, and I promise not to put the epilogue on a three-year hiatus._

When he could, Lestrade liked to take a green bus from Taunton.

No longer the lusty, first-bite-at-the-apple colour of his own green years, and not a double-decker since many years, but still green enough to work the trick and bump him down memory lane. Somerset had a way with him, of never letting him feel quite the stranger on his (too rare, okay, crappily spaced out) visits, though he _was_ a city slicker now, faraway and off colour. And yet, whenever he boarded the leaf-green Crosville and sat by a window, all it took was the cool press of glass to the tip of his nose and he was. Again. Was five-and-half-year Greg, feet bobbing in the air, soaring over the tops of hedges and sweet cider-apple trees and the slash of brilliant sea behind it all, full of a child's simple gladness at being airborne in his own small world.

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion_

Until London had proved the best, brightest ride of all. Beating even Deanna Noakes, sixteen and oblique-eyed, who had cadged his lap during their final winter term, all the way to school and back at the end of day. Every jar of the engine he'd been made to feel by her lightweight, heart-shaped little butt, every hard suck of wheel on the frozen roads, until his groin was suffocating with sensation and he had to reach back and slap his palm to the window pane, the chill jolt a temperary mercy.

"Alright, my lover?" Lestrade's elderly seat-neighbour was poking him in the ribs, a sharp-fingered Samaritan. " 'Ee look a bit nappy to me."

"Sorry. I mean, yeah. No. Thanks. It's been – a long journey."

"Aha. Been gallivantin', have'ee?" His Samaritan wheezed out a benevolent chuckle. "Old'uns, young'uns, that's all they're about these days. Gallivantin' up and down and in and out, if ye take my meaning" – a sharper poke – "until they're gallivantin' feet first into the blessed earth. Tell'ee what, mate, let the bloody telly do it for 'ee. Me, I've buried three of 'em in my back garden. Arrr. One dackel and three tellies. Takes the juice out of you, gallivantin'. Where ye be going to?"

They were nearing the Watchet road, and as the bus gathered speed, Lestrade's thighs tautened in memory, pushing back against the stiff fabric of his seat. He'd been eighteen, nineteen on that road, a bonfire of sulks and spikes, Greggo to the gang ("My friends think I'm dating a _frog_" – Deanna) with whom he rode his Magna Honda across any mudrut guaranteed to leave a shiny dark trail on the main tarmac. _His_ mark, _his_ thumbprint, red and swollen as it might be from chasing Led Zep and Kansas on his guitar well into the late hours until they flipped into the very early hours ("Well, the cock crow for me" – Da).

Gallivantin' came cheaper on a bloke then, Lestrade reflected wryly. It certainly didn't involve global travelling, let alone death by wordpun and Mr Moriarty's whole new take on free-fall style. In his coat pocket, Lestrade's hand muscles hunched thickly around his phone. Still no news.

_I set a course for the winds of fortune_

"Ah, there be my stop."

Staplegrove, Norton Manor, Seven Ash… old names, immovable objects. Lestrade waved to the old man with his empty hand. Then lowered his fingers, tapping them briefly to the glass where he could make out his own face, made transparent by the cloudy light against an endless span of fields and hedges. Here goes, he thought. A tiny absolution for the vulnerable little sod who had turned his back on the land at twenty, dropping school and Deanna and Da's tentative offer of a job in the Watchet Coastguard, _his_ old gang. Letting the shiny black trail take him all the way to London in a red bomber jacket, only to pull him back six months later, when her postcard came.

For it is in the nature of every trail to be two-ended. God knew if he'd had it hammered into him by the Met's finest. And sometimes there's a corpse at one end, but the real offence is hiding at the other end, Lestrade told the fields savagely, and I don't give a rat's arse if it was he who kicked that poisonous little Leprechaun sixty feet under. Just let him live. Oh god, let him live. And sometimes it's just you waking up every morning at one end, wondering what they're doing over there, if they've forgiven enough that she'd be here, your Ma, waiting for you at the old stop. Even though you've just called them to say "London's my scene now." And so it is. For good. Packed with in-your-face sensations, day in day out. A six-string riff on a loop.

London was all that, and more. London was three-quarter rain, a stolen Magna Honda, a single room in Stepney and a Baptist landlady who disliked him on account of his cross earing and once, famously, had spat on his fish and chips. He wasn't consulting Sherlock back then - for the undisputable reason that he wouldn't be gifting Sherlock to the world before a year and a half - and so he'd never known if this was punishment for the smelly food or for associating the Token of the Lord with fried potatoes. It was this same landlady who kept the postcard from him a whole week after it came. A beauty, too, the glam cobalt sort that Mr Larch hoarded in his shop against the summer days and sold fifty pee apiece to the grockles. Greg had turned the card in his hands and looked at the long-legged writing for a long, long while before he actually read it. Read her.

_Carry on, my wayward son._

It had been the start of summer when the card came, and he'd boarded a green bus that smelt of warm plastic and people's company. Like this one. Lestrade leant forward and began his count down. Three stops to go, two if the City Council was still having that big gurt oak before the children's centre uprooted. The road keptl unwinding before him, the dusty life-thread that ran through all the journeys only to bring them together, stitching past to present and letting him connect even to Sherlock's blank course of fortune. Because it really came down to the same vigil, the same pulse of waiting. Twenty-nine years had gone, and still he was staring at every preliminary hedge, post box, rough-stoned wall, and there it was again, that mad, hopeful-helpless beat.

Lestrade stood up and grabbed his bag from the rack, deaf to the driver's hissy warning. He knew exactly when to flex his knees when the bus took that sharp final turn into the foot of their street. There was his stop, and there she was. Of course she was. Pushing the strap of her bag higher up her shoulder the way she always did when his bus came into view, so that he could have the full measure of her arms.

"That's my boy!" his Ma said, beaming at him.

Lestrade sent his bag flying down the bus steps and walked straight into her arms. She hugged him, and he hugged her back, careless if anyone saw them, the tall white-haired woman and the rugged inspector on leave. Even in her firm clasp, he could feel how the years had chipped at her, drawing her closer to her roots and the country earth she loved so wholeheartedly. But they couldn't ruin her straight forehead and nose, totting up in a face that was still this close to horsey, with a horse's cunningly placid look. He and his Da had competed for years to stroke a hand down over it, him to tease her into a fret, Da to soothe her after one.

Eyes closed, he pushed his cheek fiercely to hers. And muttered "That's what you said" to the white wisps of hair.

"Alright, sunshine? Your bag's hugging the dust."

"That first time I came back," he said, dropping his arms. "Remember? Me standing there with my guts in a butterfly knot, not knowing what you'd say, and Mr Dawson at the wheel, taking his own sweet time to turn her about? And you next, smiling. 'Off on two wheels, back on four,' you called out to him. 'That's my boy for you!' "

She was looking at him, startled, on the verge of wondering. But he couldn't tell her yet. Not with her heart in its present state and the climb before them, he couldn't say that he knew, that he was sorry, so very sorry, that he hadn't known then how a child's going away could leave you so strangely orphaned. And because he couldn't tell her yet, he took her hand and tucked it under his arm, safe and warm, so they could labour up the street together.

"Looks like you've been remembering," she laughed. "The road does that to you, eh? Let's get you home, sunshine. See if you still remember how to make a Lestrade cuppa."

* * *

><p>The Lestrade cuppa, a time-honoured custom, was also a simple if rewarding operation.<p>

First, you chose a teapot out of a grand total of two, known respectively to the family as "the Half Pint" and "the Cookie Booster". The Half Pint was an 'umble, tea-for-two little fellow, while the Cookie Booster, a buffer number, held enough cuppas to keep Ma's Gardening Club well-watered on Tuesdays and justify its name. Year after year, the Half Pint and the Cookie Booster had gone through more untimely deaths and regenerations than Doctor Who, often at a younger Greg's hands, but their names had stayed through thick and thin - be it china, glass, steel, or Ma's favourite "dotty" pottery.

"Good thing I bought some HobNobs," Ma was saying. "You never gave me a proper warning, love. Very poor form for a senior police officer, well, not that I'm not glad to see you any time. But I thought you'd have in mind to wait after Sunday, what with the crowd we're expecting at church. Christmas was bad enough, coming right after that weird pill-poll murder case. Remember the woman who spotted you from Panorama and jumped the Communion queue to pick a hair off your coat? Poor Father Ellis nearly dropped the Cup. Said he was definitely casting you in next year's Nativity Play, handcuffing Herod to a camel or something, just so he could sell extra tickets and buy himself a new cassock ."

Once you had settled on a pot, your next task was to fill the teakettle with the right amount of water. This was a bit trickier than your average check-the-line reflex, mostly because Ma, who walked her own thin line between tradition and modernity, hated electric kettles. The first headmistress this side of the Bristol Channel to have an IBM and man it herself, Lestrade thought proudly, and the most stubborn when it came to the why and how of boiled water.

"…twelve, thirteen, fourteen. What's so special about Sunday?"

The trick was to hold the kettle under the water tap and count aloud. Eight for the Half Pint, fourteen for the Booster, Ma's rule because she favoured scientific precision. Greg's Nan, who did not care for numbers, had put her trust in the Lord's Prayer (to Greg's unspeakable shame when his gang crashed the house at tea-time only to be offered a soft-boiled egg each). Nan's mother, born and raised in Bude, had used an old Cornish charm:

_White sheep, black sheep, walking in the rye_

_White sheep, black sheep, come again bye-bye._

He was gazing so hard at the kettle, his mind stealing obsessively back to a Swiss watershed and the black sheep that had been found in it, reaping the wages of his original sin, that he missed her silence.

The wind gusted out of the back window, straight from the garden, shutting the cupboard door on a mild boom. Lestrade lifted his head.

"Greg." His mother's voice was mild too, but unmistakeable. "Is there something you need to tell me?"

"I…"

But the kettle struck in with its banshee wail, as the pressure drove the steam through the whistle, and he groped for the cream. Once upon a time, a Lestrade cuppa must have shattered under the hot water, spawning a tradition that a dollop of cream had to be spooned at the bottom of any next cup. Lestrade, a traditionalist at home, spooned the cream and warmed the pot, aware of the temptation to stop and wrap his two hands around the round, solid belly of the Cookie Booster.

Because there were so, so much more than three or four cuppas in here. He thought of Mrs Hudson's mad tea parties; he thought of Sherlock's exhausted face and shoulders the first time he'd waken up on Lestrade's long-suffering sofa and been handed a mug of coffee, black, two sugars for comfort; he thought of a yellow teapot among a trail of bread crumbs while he was telling his son that he'd be a father, no matter what.

It was as if all the cuppas were fitting into one another across the ever-stretching time and space, Matryoshka-like, their warmth destined not to evaporate. And so it felt simply, wonderfully fitting that, just when he tipped the pot after a few minutes and watched the white cream cloud up in the tea, the last connection should click in from afar, brisk and resonant in the still kitchen.

"Alive," was Mycroft's overture, though he immediately spoiled the effect by adding "and if that's a vintage Le Creuset purple kettle behind you, _do_ tell your mother I can make her a very handsome offer."

* * *

><p>"According to my coiffeur, or <em>capilloartiste<em> as he likes to be known, we lose eighty a day once our twenties have lost sight of us." Mycroft Holmes could be heard heaving the sigh of the truly stoic. "In that respect, I'm afraid even Sherlock ranks as an average male. And thus we come full DNA circle, or should I say helix, my dear Greg. But yes, alive and well."

Lestrade's throat was still trying to kick-start a breath. "…_Where_?"

He listened as Mycroft spun his tale of woe. Apparently, the cheap hotel room in Interlaken containing the hair had been taken by a tall, dark and coatless Mr Sigerson on the night following Sherlock's vanishing act. Interestingly enough, Mr Sigerson had signed his name on another hotel register the very next evening, only a few streets away from the previous. In both cases the man had spoken perfect Swiss German, checked in very late and offered to pay up-front. The hotel manager had either been too sleepy or too unscrupulous to ask for some ID.

And then, Mr Sigerson had disappeared.

"So he made it easy to be tracked at first." Lestrade had made it up the stairs and to his old room as he spoke, his hand mechanically rattling the door knob, always a bit loose. "Which makes fuck-all sense, unless he felt secure enough to do it. Or wanted to leave a sign? Some sorta clue for you, or John, or me –"

"For you, Greg. Definitely for you." Mycroft sighed again. "Though I wouldn't hold it against you if you missed it. Being Sherlock, he's managed to twist his clue out of all proportions and make a Swiss pretzel out of it. Sigerson, Greg. Think. Siger's son."

"I've been through all kinds of hell about him," Lestrade said, glaring blankly at a patch of wall where, once upon a long-ago, there had been a monster poster of Siouxsie Sioux. "I've ditched my team, gone airsick, snogged a rock face with my arse facing the Great Nothing. And all he can think of is my smoking habit? No, wait." He could foretell another sigh coming. "'s all right. I'll get it in time."

"I can explain –"

"Don't bother." He didn't care how rude he sounded. If his son had left him a sign, had left _him_ a sign, there was no way on earth Lestrade would let anyone else unwrap his gift . Not while he sat there in a daze of wondering, heartbeating, thanksgiving. In fact, it took a few seconds before he remembered who was waiting patiently on the active end of the call, sharing his trail with him. A trail. A two-ended trail. "Did you get Moran?"

The answer came with a ping. An attached photograph, which, when he opened the file, showed a rather shabby placard, probably from some back pocket or other in Soho, advertising the 'Bagatelle Club' and its celebrated retro singer, Madame Bastienne. Lestrade looked at a familiar face, last seen in a different hairstyle and hair colour, plunging a hairpin into a young man's heart, and whistled under his breath. Knowing better than to ask Mycroft about means or opportunity, he opted for a sober, "Fast work. I take it he's in your custody, then?"

"In-deed. MI6 was very grateful for your lead, Greg. One of the deadliest assassins in the world today, though rather fetching in a peek-a-boo bang."

"He wasn't with Moriarty, then?"

"If he was, he beelined back to England."

"But then, Sherlock is safe!" Lestrade jumped to his feet, nearly tripping over his bag in a warm tide of relief. Surely, all was well now? All would be well, and all manner of things? Why the heck was Mycroft being so quiet? "Because, if Moriarty's dead and Moran's been caught – or doesn't he know it yet?"

"The odds, to me, are that he knows. And is currently in England, fuming incognito like a chimney-stack because we pulled the rug from under his feet. He's Sherlock, Greg. Tell me, how well do you know your Bible?"

"Well enough." And he'd grown familiar enough with Mycroft's conversationary U-turns that he could take this one in his stride. "Are we talking prodigal sons or say-one-word-and-my-stress-levels-will-be-cured?"

"The first. If I know my brother at all, he is too stubborn and too shamed to come back empty-handed. He knows how dead-set against his going you were in the first place. The prodigal son may have kept an eye on the filthy hogs, but Sherlock…"

"… won't be happy before he's hamstrung them, down to the last piglet, and roasted them over a spit. Cheers."

"Don't be too hard on him, Greg. It's…complicated. Our father –"

"I know, Mycroft. You don't have to say. But if he's after the whole herd, that could take –"

"According to my assistant's calculations" - Mycroft's tones were glum - "the delay might be up to three years."

"_Three years ?!_"

"Well, taking into account the Moriartists' extended activities in the Eastern…"

"Mycroft, you have to stop him." The frantic pacing was doing nothing to abate Lestrade's sense of outrage. Three years, for goodness' sake! What was he even supposed to do in the meantime? Take a stand with his arms crossed? Fat chance. Light a candle to St Rita? Adopt young Dimmock as a temp? _Sherlock!  
><em>

"If you can tell me _how_ to do it, I'll stop him," came the resigned answer. "Meanwhile, your team is clean. All of it. You were never in danger, Greg, that was just Moriarty's bluff. Let us pray that Sherlock finds out before he heads for Tibet on a snow-goose chase."

"We'll bloody find how. I will, if I have to bribe the Dalai Lama into locking him in a convent. Sweet Christ on a Honda. Still, he's alive. Good enough to go with, I say. Not half. Can you check if that Moran had a Moran of his own?"

"Probably called Mr Mortgage, or Morsbrod, or something equally untasty. Consider it done, Greg. Meanwhile –"

" – keep calm, carry on and try not to slap him?"

"I was going to say 'take a leaf out of the Ecclesiastical calendar and don't lose hope', but I think I like your version better."

That last sentence made fuck-all sense, but Lestrade let it pass. He was too busy thinking up his next step.

* * *

><p><em>Well and truly alive. Possibly in England. In a fuckton of trouble if he waits three years before gallivantin' home. GL.<em>

* * *

><p>Ma's garden was a child's book picture. And, like any child's picture, it was both chaotic and friendly.<p>

There was a round bed of sunflowers and tomatoes at one end, a round bed of veronica, sage and strawberries in the middle, and nothing at the other end, which was left a wasteland of grass and beehives. Some of the ladies in Ma's gardening club had been very forceful in their comments over this lack of visible pattern, which Ma usually countered with a tart, "It's a garden, not a prayer rug."

Lestrade stopped on the kitchen threshold and watched her. She was kneeling before the sunflower-and-tomato bed, fork in hand.

"I wish you'd hire someone to do the tiring stuff." Two-parts tease, one-part truth – their home routine. "Can't be good for your heart."

"Heart is as heart does." Ma turned back, eyeing him carefully under her sunhat. "I'm just tinkering, Greg. And Mr Parry's niece's husband has agreed to come over and give a hand with the roots and the bees. Nice lad he is, just back from the army."

"Can't Mr Parry give a hand of his own?"

"I'm not letting him into this garden, hand or foot." Ma's eyes gleamed with a revengeful light. "Superstitious old fool. He doesn't believe in worm gardening."

So it was worms, now. Lestrade made a careful mental note. Last year it had been mirrors – she had read that they brought in more light once hanged on a garden wall, and made him collect every shard and broken piece in their street. He'd come back with his two hands bandaged and spent his first week at work hiding from Gregson, who called him the Sainted Greg and asked loudly after his stigmata. Worms, if he was very, very lucky, would prove less lethal.

"Of course, these idiots at the Club have elected him president again," Ma grumbled to the tomatoes. "A man who thinks sage will grow where a woman gardens in trousers! Tchah! Let's not talk of Parry. Have you made up your mind to tell me?"

"What?" The gleam in her eyes had turned soft-sharp, nothing to do with the sun now, or the infamous Parry.

"Greg. _Really_. You call yesterday to say you're coming, and when you're here you can't even remember that this Sunday is Easter Sunday. And we're two for tea, as we've been for a while now, but there you go and chose the Cookie Booster. I've still got the use of my eyes, laddie. Of course you have something on your mind. Or...someone." The blue gleam was positively laser-like with meaning.

"Well…" But she was looking tired, pushing her forearm up her sweating brow, and he temporised. "Tell you what. You let me take you on a picnic tomorrow, and I'll tell you."

She was still eyeing him.

"Is it a problem?"

"Bit of. But the right sort. And the best of news. Cop's honour."

At last she turned her head away and rose step by cautious step from the ground, taking off her gloves. "Aye. I'll bake us a batch of scones, then. You were always one to celebrate with scones. Or pasties."

Once again he felt the hearbeating, thanksgiving rush in his veins. He took two steps in her direction and threw his arms around her, oblivious to her, "Greg, I'm all dirten!".

"I'll take the scones and the pasties," he told her. "And the doughboys – the dumplings. Let's make it a picnic to end all picnics!"

"What, all three of them?"

"Yeah," he said, and laughed until the tears came to his eyes and he had to let go of her blurred form. A memory struck him fondly and he couldn't help adding, "It's a three-batch problem. By the way, Ma, do we have a German dictionary in the house? I have a little puzzle to look up."


	7. Chapter 7

_Oh god. I mean. You know. Holy moly and all that. I mean, god. Thank god. JW_

_Oh, goody! Martha_

_I really mean, fuck. JW_

_Dear John is probably wording this much better than I could! Martha_

_Bet he forgot the milk, too, the great pilchard. So much for sodding off to Switzerland. JW_

_Good for you, sir! Sally_

_Wait. What do you mean, three years? JW_

_We're not funding international cab expenses for three years, mind. Sally_

_Marie T. just popped in. Hoorraying with a lavender mojito! Martha_

_I'm not waiting three years for him! Abso-fucking-ly not. JW_

_At a stretch, and as a favour to you, sir, we'll all pitch in and buy him a spacehopper. Sally_

_Don't you worry, dear. I made her swear on Mary Berry. Shhhh. Martha_

_Not a sodding sailor's wife, me. JW_

_I'll git maryed. To smeone. Tellim. TellimImeanit. JW_

_I mean! JW_

_Bible not much good, as dear Marie's a Zoroastrian at heart. But she believes in Sherlock Holmes and Victoria sponge – and no soggy bottom for either! Martha_

_Greg, mate. Sorry for being a dick. Had a lavender too many, obviously. JW_

_Look. Whatever he's done, whatever trouble he's making? He'll make it through. JW_

_You and I, we know he will. JW_

_Even if it feels like three years already. JW_

_...Fuck. I'm sounding like a sailor's wife, right? JW_

* * *

><p>Brilliant, beautiful Saturday was kids' day out at Doniford Bay. Twenty families craddled between sea and sky on the beachgrass that had been trodden by Celtic sheepskin and Saxon leather and Roman nail-studded sandals long before the age of Clarkes and Crocs began.<p>

All in season, Lestrade thought, ducking as a red frisbee zoomed within an inch of his skull, followedwith by a toddler in hot pursuit. He watched a flight of gulls cross throatily to another latitude and wondered if they were the same white dots he'd once held under his merciless fire, back when crimefighting was all play and no work, and his biggest case record the taking down of fifty Imperial Stormtroopers between tea and jam.

Mouth and fingers duly wiped, he stole a glance at Ma still gathering the scraps of what had been a glorious picnic indeed, and turned back to his pocket German-to-English dictionary. So far he'd drawn a blank with his Sigers. Taking a bold guess and eliminating the probable _Sieger_, aka _winner, victor, champ, conquering hero (hail the)_. Yeah, except nah. Lestrade had his penny'orth of pride, same as any vintage cop, but the words just didn't...pack a meaning. Spark a pang. Didn't sound _family_, a word you'd tip into your old man's ear with half a wink and half a smirk, to make him huff. To make him glad.

Lestrade laid down the squat little book and flumped onto the tartan blanket, one arm pillowing his neck. He let the wind nuzzle his cheek, conscious of the dune striking a green distance either side of him, and the children's cries in every direction, nipping at the bright perpendicular sky. _Getting there, sunshine._ He still felt the book's heaviness at his side, under his palm, grounding him to his quest. _Give us half a mo'_.

A word clue. Well, his old man had been pretty good at them. The Timescrossword champion twice over, as he'd told Sherlock, and one helluva punster to boot. Learnt from the best, Greg had. The suck-and-give of the waves down below was getting louder, and he let them pull at his mind, let himself turn in the grip of the tide and drift away until the light had turned a more parchment white, and he was sitting again at the kitchen table, next to Da's hunched back as he slumped forward from his chair, resting his elbows on the tabletop after a long day's shift. There were other shapes playing across his eyelids, shadowy, tiny fingerbrushing motions. The garden bats, he knew, their rounds caught by the ceiling lamp and flashed back on the kitchen wall, again and again, like the revolving stars in a kid's nightlight.

Strange, how their evening riteritual was coming back to him, down to the faint crinkle of noise at his ear. Like foil paper crumpled it into a ball. The sound of the crisp fresh sheet which Da opened and spread out for them first thing after supper, flattening it against the plastic tablecloth with the heel of his hand. And then the game was on, him reading the clues and Da's hand flashing over the grid. Sometimes he'd ticked all the boxes into brilliance before Greg's bath finished running upstairs. Sometimes it took longer. _Thing is_, Da said, clapping his shoulder against the rising squeaks of the bats, _your clue's a bit of a mix-up. Bit wayward, eh? Hiding out, like he doesn't care to be found. Like you and I don't know better. See, lad? Little mix-up, that's all. Nothing a dad can't sort out._

Lestrade awoke with a jolt to the screeching gulls and the radiant afternoon glow. A mix-up – Christ, yes! Or anagram, Da would say, the oldest, smoothest trick in the crossword trade. (He grabbed the book, ripping at the too-thin pages in his hurry to check, to find.) In German, because Sherlock had been in shock for real, that day, must have been after surviving the fall, his mind blanketing itself in his childhood lingo... and...yes! There it was, top of the page, standing out black on white. The last joke he'd shared with his son. Their last bond, before the night had gone and swallowed Sherlock. _Old man, litt. grey-haired man, man of wisdom and experience_. Lestrade's fingers touched the word lightly, fervently, a caress to an absent cheek.

_Greis_. Siger. Sigerson.

He was raising his face to a pair of blue eyes, lined from the weight and wisdom of living, but still giving as good as they got. "I'm a father," he said.

Ma nodded. She was reserving judgement, Lestrade saw, but he also saw the humorous tilt in her face muscles while she weighed up his words.

"You're giving family a go, then. Well, I'm glad of that. Of course, your da would say it's a bit late in the day – or no, you know how he was, more like 'couldn't lay your truncheon to rest, eh, officer,' but – "

"Ma!" Lestrade turned aside to frown and wither the teen and teenette on the next blanket into soberness. Perhaps Doniford Bay hadn't been such a good idea.

" – she looks like she's got a head on her shoulders, fine head of hair too, and if she's got the heart that goes with it, she'll be my girl and welcome. Are you two planning to marry? I'll fetch your Nan's garnet ring, should go nicely with her colouring."

_What_? Oh god, she couldn't possibly think... and now the dapper old gent walking his Labrador in a navy cardy with epaulettes – yeah, the dog too – was stopping to hear his answer.

"I'm not marrying Donovan!" His desperate whisper would have been more successful if half the bay hadn't gone on a lull in faultless synch. "Jesus, Ma! I'm not marrying anyone. It's not like there's a woman involved."

"_Really_?" Oh, he knew that turn-of-the-tide darkening of her eyes, the way they fretted up first thing in her face and flicked to a darker blue, from cornflower to Watchet. _Watch it_, Detective Inspector Lestrade cautioned himself.

"They say it takes to sides to make a war," Ma rued loudly to the cliff at large. "Last time I checked, forty-seven years ago, the same went for babies."

"Ma..." Lestrade shook his head helplessly as the Hon. Old Salt took a step forward, tugging on the lead and readying himself to soothe the widow in distress. "There's no woman because it all happened more than twenty years ago and she's dead and buried." This, he saw, had the merit of slightly diminishing his audience appeal. Grabbing his chance, Lestrade crossed himself dramatically. The teens backed out to the fringes of their plaid, and the Labrador uttered a dismayed woof. Lestrade lowered his voice again. "My son's all grown-up, Ma" – though there were those that would dispute the fact, but never mind them now – "and his name's Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes."

He gave the bay a quick once over, but it had taken up its Saturday buzz with renewed indifference. Contrary to their Saxon ancestors, John, Sherlock & Blogs still had to take over Somerset.

Ma, on the other hand, was staring at him open-mouthed.

"Surely not your Sherlock Holmes?"

"Ma, really. It's not like they come in dozens."

"That very odd, very _rude_ young man who solves cases for you? Martha's tenant? The one with, what was it again, 'a size eighteen ego squeezed into a size twelve shirt'?"

"Ma, what did I say about reading the _Daily Mail_?"

"But, Greg..." There was no earthly way of stopping her now she'd found her track. Reminded him of someone. "Oh, sweetheart. I know how it is. Turned fifty before you did, and don't I know what pits and aches it digs into you, longings you don't even remember you had in you. I wish that marriage of yours – but let's not go into that. But, son, you have to face up to reality. That man just can't be one of us, he's...he's all cucumber and IQ!"

As definitions went, Lestrade reflected, he'd take her any day over the Daily Mail.

"We've had every test under the sun," he answered simply. "I can produce a chit from the British government if that's what it takes to convince you. But he's my boy for good. And yeah, he's everything you said. Rude. One-man demolition site. The only witness in courtroom history who got the coroner to _bite_ him so he could use the tooth printmarks to prove his case. Yeah. But he's so much more. You have no idea. He's fine and brave and smart and fast, and... he's such a lad, Ma." He paused, his voice faltering, and took in a gulp of briny air to steady himself. "It's not comfy, being a good man for him. Half the time, it takes the bejesus out of me. But it's a blessing too. All the time. _He_'s a blessing."

The sky was changing over their heads, the white of clouds gathering quicker from the west, pitching the light into blunter, eel-coloured tones. She was lost in her thoughts. After a while, she looked up and spoke, the old home-voice as even as before.

"Does he run truant?"

"A lot." Lestrade swallowed and smiled.

"Married to his work?"

"That's one below...Yeah. For better or for worse. Only, I think there's someone on the side now."

"And you say he's a good manm?"

The cliff before him turned to a foggy, dewy sight. They weren't alone, but they might as well have been when he leant forward and ran a light hand down the precious horsey face. "The very best."

"Then he's enough of a Lestrade for me." Ma nodded once again to herself, briskly, before starting on her usual slow-mo routine of getting up. "When do I get to meet that newfound son?"

"Ah." Lestrade, also rising, felt his knees go numb under him and had to hunker again on the plaid. "That's just it. I – I've lost him."

A sharp turn of the head. But what she saw must have told her that he wasn't punning, wasn't playing games, wasn't pulling a Lestrade on her – her words every time Da and he ganged up to tease her. The next thing he knew, it was she pulling him up, never losing her grip on his elbows until they were facing each other on the grass, the west wind buffeting them closer. They made a brittle axis together, aging bones, hearts under arrest, white and grey wisps of hair ridiculously tangled in the air. But the old alliance was there , the have-and-hold between them, a bit ragged at the seams by the losses that had come and gone, his divorce, Da's passing, the pits and aches dug into a house where only one lived now, but still here. Ever tangible, like her hand cupping his cheek, soft-worn and warm as the pulse in her words while she said,

"All right, love. Gimme."

* * *

><p>On Sunday, he let Ma take him to church and ensconce them in her favourite pew, close enough to the altar that she could keep a close watch on the main flower arrangement. Why, Lestrade wasn't entirely sure – possibly in case the hydrangeas were taken in a faint mid-sermon and had to be carried out. They came from Mr Parry's garden, he suspected, and hadn't been blessed with worm vim.<p>

The weather was holding, the daylight fountaining all around them from the stained glass windows until it seemed to come out of the walls, dazzling Lestrade's eyes and distracting his mind. Prayer didn't come easy to him, never had. He'd never been a Sunday School copper and the twenty past years had taken some of that wind, spiritus, out of his sails. His pleas to God came and went much in the manner of his son's texts to him – all shortcuts, all about bundling facts, sequence and meaning into a mere flash and beep. God help me, his prayers went, usually followed by _Sherlock, Anderson. Ta,_ or _Gregson. Into temptation. HELP_, or, in his rushed, panicky, blue-light-in-a-blue-funk hours, a mere _God_ or _Please_ on a suffocating loop.

Sherlock, he tried again, pressing his face into the cup of his hands and totally unaware that once upon a time, an anon mystic had advocated one-word prayers as the shortest way to God's heart. He paused, and tried again. Sherlock…

"And here, dearly beloved, is the answer!" Lestrade started, tossed out of his loop by Father Ellis's trumpeting baritone. He peeped between his fingers, only to see the stocky Padre bunch up his alb, slip a hand into his trousers pocket and wave...an iPad tablet in front of his audience? Who, knowing their shepherd well, were answering with a shy, yet hearty, Aaaah. You never could tell with Father Ellis, who liked to think of himself as a Roman Cathogeek and whose project of having the Youth Group rewrite the Annunciation as a series of Tweets from the Holy Dove had nearly made the national news. So far, the diocese top brass had kept a low profile. But might draw the a line at Nokia-sponsored sermons.

"Too often, we think of ourselves as a despised minority," Father Ellis was booming on. "A bunch of has-beens in the present age, our message old news to the new media, Corpus Christi yesterday's tagline to the corporate world. O we of little faith! Has anyone here checked up on Google this morning? Really? Not even the weather? Oh, well. Switch on your phones, then, dear brothers and sisters, and prepare for a heart-warming sight."

There was a sound of shuffling and mumbling, then a medley of sharp vibrations as the congregation followed suit. Ma burrowed into her raffia-woven bag and brought out a BlackBerry smartphone, so new and shiny that Lestrade had to narrow his eyes at her.

"So that's why we had instant cocoa mix this morning?" he whispered, flicking his own decent-enough-IQ Sony open.

"I've no idea what you mean." But Ma had the decency to blush a little. "It's Easter Sunday. We always have milk chocolate on Easter Sunday."

"And there I was, thinking the price of a virtuous kettle was far above rubies. And pixels." Lestrade grinned back at her schoolmarm frown. "It's a fair deal, Ma. Now switch it on and lemme see what I get out of it. Because I think I know exactly... Jesus Horatio Christ, will you look at that! "

"Greg." But her reproachful "Not in church!" was drowned under the humming and buzzing that were quickly taking over the shuffling and mumbling as everyone gaped at today's Google page. More especially, at the faint, almost translucid group of letters hovering inside the search bar like a watermark. Lestrade, who already knew what they spelled, let his eyes scan the new Google doodle instead. Trust Mycroft to fit his own grain of salt into the picture and do so with minimal effort. Merely by inserting a demure little cross between the second and third letter, leaving the tiniest gap before the fourth and fifth, and turning the final e into a busy bee that took off now and then to flit gently about the clever, "GO †O GL" and its lovely background landscape, all green hills and red cider apples, with a brilliant slash of blue which Father Ellis was now explaining could only be Lake Tiberias.

"A call to all disciples of the GOOD LORD to go and join Him now He is risen, and live in hope for we know, of course we do, we all know where to..."

"Greg." Ma sounded hopeful indeed, her lips twitching in amusement more than reprobation. "Young man, is this any of your doing?"

"You said to signal back, right?" Lestrade whispered back, his grin wider and dafter as he stared at the screen. "Tell him that we're good, he can come back any time, his dad will be there and waiting. No proviso, no tit for tat, no matter what or who he catches me first. Like the old story. Well, there you go."

He looked down again at the search bar and the pale shimmering letters in it, chuckling to himself even as Father Ellis called for everyone to peal their ringtones high in the air in celebration of the joyful day. _You know where to find me_. Yeah, that should do the trick, the wink. The prayer. That should say it all.

* * *

><p>The grin wouldn't leave him alone that day. It was there when he sat before Ma's lunch of roast shoulder of lamb with garden herbs and garden honey, and it was still there after the last dish had been washed and dried, and he watched her climb the stairs to her early afternoon nap.<p>

Feeling too restless to stay indoors, Lestrade grabbed his coat and went out for a walk. The childhood sights took him in again as he drifted from street to street, pushing his collar up against the nippy breeze, and yet there was a new impatience in him, a shift of mood that kept his feet on the move and made the past a more slippery handrail than two days before, when he'd clung to a green bus and let it envelop him into a warm glut of nostalgia. He had to stop to greet a man in a windcheater, with a rugged face, whom he knew had been one of his gang, Greggo's Gang, possibly Teddy (unless it was Mickey), and punch his arm genially when Mickey (or it could have been Jo-Jo) said he'd made it to senior fucking manager, yes sir, take the job and keep the change.

"Me? I'm a family man, pal," he countered proudly, upgrading the grin to a senior-to-senior wise nod. They'd all managed, give or take. And they'd all turned aging men in the process, though he felt it as a brave thing now, a proud thing, not to be hidden or denied, like their common silvering hair. They stood a minute more in the wind, trading clipped news and good wishes, before they waved each other on their parting ways.

Lestrade took the left turn that led to the lane along the graveyard wall and paused for a furtive smoke, turning his back on the graves and letting the first hard buzz of tobacco swirl him into a contented haze. I'll take him here someday, he thought, watching the play of shadows on the sun-warmed wall and remembering the old tale, that it had been raised to keep out the thieves who stole in at night to nick bodies for the local anatomist. He'll like it. And the bees, there's always the bees. And then...

And _And then_ became a game of faith, a loose tale that he told himself stubbornly, adding the worms to the bees, with a side dish of sea-kelp, and the best view of Orion and the stars from Ma's sunflower bed, and the butcher's jackapoo, who could only enter his kennel tail first. Before he knew, _And then_ had carried him to Ma's gate, his heart still swirled by hope and nicotine. There were muffled, steady sounds coming from the back garden, and he turned the corner of the house, ready to give her a hand in that last hour before the evening train claimed him.

But the figure squatting on his hams and digging at the wild grass with a sharp, exact swing of arm and shoulder, wasn't Ma. Lestrade glanced at the close-cropped yellow hair and the profile ear sticking out from under an old straw hat and remembered Mr Parry's nephew, the Army lad with the Army buzzcut, who Ma had said came to help with the rough end of gardening.

"Hey." He extended one arm with his thumb up, wondering if youth-friendly salutations had changed much since his era. Of course, the effect wasn't quite the same when he wasn't riding a Honda. "Nice sun we're having."

"Arrh."

"Bit cloudy at the seams. But that would be a plus in your line of trade, eh?"

"Arrh." The lad laid the gardening fork down and bent his knees and shoulders forward, taking hold of a clump of dandelions.

Lestrade dropped his jacket on the grass and sat down. The bee-hives were casting their shadows on the grass, but to his eyes the shadows merely added patches of a deeper, fresher green. "Say, you wanna hear something funny?"

This time, the lad grunted. Not that he could hear much difference.

Lestrade gave him a break and a benevolent smile. He could smell a whiff of something warm and buttery coming from the kitchen, where Ma must be fixing him some sort of home-made takeaway. He waited until the slim shoulders were once more bent over the soil and spoke. "They used to say it went round and round the Earth, like a busy yellow Pac-Man. Yeah. You'd think we know better in this day and age, but I'm not so sure. No, I'm not so sure. Because what I know about the sun is – well, it's not the scientific stuff. Haven't got the brains for that. It's the marrow stuff, the stuff that comes from getting your arse up for work, fashionably early, and knowing he'll be here."

He took a breath and looked at the still figure. "And it stays with you, the thing, the knowledge, even when it's still dark when you get your car and you could be thinking, so it came yesterday, and the day before, but how can I sodding tell it's gonna be here today? Bang out there, between the cuppa and the car keys? But you don't. And there he is. And you should be so damn proud and happy not because he's a star, not because he blitzes into your scene and makes you see things you couldn't possibly see without it, but just because, yeah. There he is again."

The figure sighed, the figure turned. Lestrade leant forward and flicked the ridiculous hat, which he now remembered as his Nan's Sunday best, off Sherlock's head. His fingers brushed the tip of an ear, the shorn head, his son's left cheek, where the palest patch of pink still lingered. Behind them, the delicious butter-dripping smell was in full swing now, shaping up into – yeah. Definitely hot-cross buns. He shook his head. "I see you've met your Gran. Got properly introduced to the family rites, too."

Sherlock was still looking at him, his face ten years younger than when Lestrade had last seen it, not from the silly disguise but from the pulse of hesitant, avid joy. He rubbed at the chastised cheek, then bit his lower lip. "She – seems to have skipped a part."

And then arms were rising, his, Sherlock's – it didn't matter which of them took that first step, and it would be Lestrade's own joy, in retrospect, not to know – and he was gathering Sherlock to him, making that tight, safe place between his arms and his heart that would be Sherlock's space and privilege as long as he claimed it. He knew he was being held too, with an impetus that left them slightly rocking on their knees, in the open grass, father clasped to son, son cradling father, until the shadows had lengthened across the grass, one of which appeared to be waving a wooden spoon over their head in a five-o'-clock benediction.

"All right, you two. Less cuddling and more cooking – I could do with a pair of hands to peel the apples." But she wrapped an arm around Sherlock when he leapt to his feet with his customary niftiness and looked at him with a beaming smile. His was a little self-conscious, but a far cry from his usual Hark-Hark-the-Snark edition. Lestrade watched the two of them, a proud if slightly misty sight. He listened as his son and heir asked eagerly how he'd fared, if he'd got the accent right, and looked at Ma as she mock-ruffled the absent curls – she must have been looking for pictures of him on her new toy – and told him next time, if he gave a bit more notice, she'd teach him how to sew knee-patches on his jeans, the true gardener's badge of office. Apparently, Sherlock had walked right into the house and collided with Ma as she climbed the stairs down from her nap. No heart had been harmed in the process, though Lestrade suspected decibels must have flown high and low around their prodigal before they set their heads together to surprise him.

"I wish you boys would stay another day or two." Ma sounded already wistful. "The new worms are due on Tuesday, all forty-five of them, and they'll need a bit of cheering on at first. The last batch was simply hopeless, you'd think they'd never seen a tomato in their lives. No zing at all."

"Oh," Sherlock said, and then, clearly struck by lightning, "oh. Have you thought about Africanizing them? I could try and get – "

"The 6:25," Lestrade cut in hurriedly. Then relented. "We'll be back at Whitsuntide, Ma. Plenty of time for you two to do your research in-between. Now come inside and help me get some food into him. I think I know whose turn it is to tell his old man a tale or two."

* * *

><p>It was only when they were settled in the bus, their bags stored overhead in the rack, that Sherlock spoke the one-word sentence, the question Lestrade knew had lain in waiting all the time.<p>

"...John?"

"Hmmm? John what, son? Oh, don't you huff-and-puff, Your Highness – you deserved it. And if you're asking if John will give you the back of his hand, too, before he asks me for yours, the answer is I've no idea. Perhaps. Perhaps not. But, Sherlock –"

He leant sideways; Sherlock bent over him.

"Sunshine, listen. What I told you this morning – it's a given. Goes without saying. So when you run off again, because we both know you will, you'll know how I stand. Because that's what Sigers do. Let go when they have to and wait until they're found again. But John's a fighter, and it's not fair to take off on a spin leaving him with his arse on the side road." Lestrade took a new breath. "You tell me about my mistakes often enough, Sherlock. Don't make that one."

Sherlock was no longer speaking, but Lestrade felt their shoulders touch; felt the tiny rustle and give that was Sherlock nodding.

"So we'd better hurry up before he ODs on lavender. And next time you come back, you bring him to meet your Gran. Though I swear, God help us all if he tells her to Afghanize her worms."

"You're really – " For some reason, Sherlock had to stop and give it another try. "You're really very certain that I'll always come back."

"Course I am." And Lestrade said no more. For the bus was storing a new speed, and as it lurched toward the station, a tunnel vision opened in him, a mere flash, a grace snapshot a long way into the road, but what it showed him was another figure posing before a cluster of bee-hives, his hair turned from grey to white, with a bee perched on it. He knew he'd be that man on a day yet to come, and he had an inkling of who would be behind the camera, taking the pic. "We're Lestrades, son." The next bumping turn of road was coming up, and he took advantage of it to drop a kiss on the shorn head. "Coming back? That's what we do best."

FINIS

_(All good journeys come to an end! Thanks for everyone who followed this and sorry, really, about the delayed postings. I'm terrible when it comes to finishing stories. Well, at least we know what my new year's resolution will be!:)_


End file.
